The Edge

by Dick Francis

  ‘Thanks for the tip,’ I said. ‘Will you let me know your plans each day, and also tell me instantly if anything odd happens you don’t expect? Even small things, really.’

  ‘Yes, sure. Ask Nell, too. She knows the story. And there are some actors who weren’t here today because they don’t get activated until later on the trip. They’re on the passenger list. Nell will point them out.’

  He stifled a yawn and looked suddenly very tired, a complete contrast to two minutes earlier, and I suspected he was one of those people who could turn energy on and off like a tap. One of Aunt Viv’s best friends had been an elderly actor who could walk down to the theatre like a tired old pensioner and go out on the stage and make the audience’s hair stand on end with his power.

  David Flynn, offering me a lift if I needed one, was beginning to move with a sort of lassitude that one would never have seen in Zak. He picked up Nell’s large envelope, opened it and distributed its contents to the others: luggage labels saying ‘Merry & Co’, and photocopied sheets of ‘Information and Advice to Passengers’.

  Scene dressing, I supposed. I asked him if he would be going anywhere near the Merry & Co office and he said he would detour that way and was as good as his word.

  ‘Do you do this all the time?’ I asked on the way.

  ‘Act, do you mean? Or mysteries?’

  ‘Either.’

  ‘Anything I’m offered,’ he said frankly. ‘Plays. Commercials. Bit parts in series. But I do mostly mysteries now that they’re so popular, and nearly all for Merry & Co. I write the stories to suit the occasion. I was engaged for a doctors’ convention last week, so we did a medical crime. Just now it’s racing. Next month I’ve got to think up something for a fishing club weekend train trip to Halifax. It keeps me employed. It pays the bills. It’s quite good fun. It’s not Stratford-upon-Avon.’

  ‘What about the other actors?’ I asked. ‘The ones in the garage.’

  ‘Much the same. It’s work. They like the train trips, even if it does mean shouting all the scenes against the wheel noise when we’re going along, because the dining cars are so long. Not by any means the right shape for a stage. We don’t always use the same actors, it depends on the characters, but they’re all friendly, we never take anyone who can’t get along. It’s essential to be tolerant and generous, to make our sort of improvisation work.’

  ‘I’d no idea mysteries were such an industry.’

  He gave a small sideways smile. ‘They have a lot in England too, these days.’

  ‘Um …’ I said, as he braked to a halt outside the Merry & Co offices. ‘How English do I sound to you?’

  ‘Very. An educated Englishman in an expensive suit.’

  ‘Well, the original plan was for me to go on the train as a wealthy owner. What would you think of my accent if I were dressed as a waiter in a deep yellow waistcoat?’

  ‘Harvest gold, that’s what they call that colour,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I wouldn’t notice your accent so much, perhaps. There are thousands of English immigrants in this country, after all. You’ll get by all right, I should think.’

  I thanked him for the lift and got out of the car. He yawned and turned that into a laugh, but I reckoned the tiredness was real. ‘See you Sunday, Tommy,’ he said, and I dryly said, ‘Sure thing, Zak.’ He drove away with a smile and I went into the Merry & Co office where the earlier calm had broken up into loud frenetic activity on several telephones.

  ‘How could twenty-five of our bikers all burst their tyres at once?’

  ‘They won’t reach Nuits St George tonight.’

  ‘Any suggestions for alternative hotels?’

  ‘Where do we find fifty new tyres, assorted, in France? They’ve cut them to ribbons, they say.’

  ‘It was sabotage. It has to be.’

  ‘They rode over a cattle-grid which had spikes on.’

  Nell was sitting at her desk talking on her telephone, one hand pressed to her free ear to block out the clamour.

  ‘Why didn’t the fools pick up their bikes and walk across?’

  ‘Nobody told them. It was a new grid. Where is Nuits St George? Can’t we get a bus to go and pick up the bikes? What bus company do we use in that part of France?’

  ‘Why isn’t our French office dealing with all this?’

  I sat on Nell’s client chair and waited. The hubbub subsided: the crisis was sorted. Somewhere in Burgundy, the bikers would be transported to their dinners on sturdier wheels, and new tyres would be found in the morning.

  Nell put her receiver down.

  ‘You arrange cycling tours?’ I said.

  ‘Sure. And trips up Everest. Not me personally, I do mysteries. Do you need something?’

  ‘Instructions.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I talked to VIA. No problems.’

  VIA Rail, I had discovered, was the company that operated Canada’s passenger trains, which didn’t mean that it owned the rails or the stations. Nothing was simple on the railways.

  ‘VIA,’ Nell said, ‘are expecting you to turn up at Union Station tomorrow morning at ten to get fitted for a uniform. Here’s who you ask for.’ She passed me a slip of paper. ‘They’ve got hand-picked service people going on this trip, and they’ll show you what to do when you meet them at the station on Sunday morning. You’ll board the train with them.’

  ‘What time?’ I asked.

  ‘The train comes into the station soon after eleven. The chefs and crew board soon after. Passengers board at eleven-thirty, after the reception in the station itself. The train leaves at twelve. That’s thirty-five minutes earlier than the regular daily train, the Canadian, which will be on our heels as far as Winnipeg.’

  ‘And the horses will have boarded, I gather, out in a loading area.’

  ‘Yes, at Mimico, about six miles away. That’s where they do maintenance and cleaning and put the trains together. Everything will be loaded there. Food, wine, flowers, everything for the owners.’

  ‘And the grooms?’

  ‘No, not them. They’re being shipped back to the station by bus after they’ve settled the horses in. And you might like to know we’ve another addition to the train, a cousin of our boss, name of Leslie Brown, who’s going as horsemaster, to oversee the horses and the grooms and keep everything up that end in good order.’

  ‘Which end?’

  ‘Behind the engine. Apparently horses travel better there. No swaying.’

  While she was talking, she was sorting postcards into piles: postcards with names and numbers on.

  ‘Do you have a plan of the train?’ I asked.

  She glanced up briefly and didn’t exactly say I was a thundering nuisance, but looked as if she thought it. Still, she shuffled through a pile of papers, pulled out a single sheet and pushed it across the desk towards me.

  ‘This is what we’ve asked for, and what they say we’ll get, but the people at Mimico sometimes change things,’ she said.

  I picked up the paper and found it was written in a column.

  ‘Do you have a plan of who sleeps where?’ I asked.

  For answer she shuffled through the same pile as before and gave me two sheets stapled together. I looked first, as one does, for my own name; and found it.

  She had given me a room – a roomette – that was right next door to Filmer.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I walked back to the hotel and at two o’clock local time telephoned to England, reckoning that seven o’clock Friday evening was perhaps a good time to catch Brigadier Catto relaxing in his Newmarket house after a busy week in London. I was lucky to catch him, he said, and he had news for me.

  ‘Remember Horfitz’s messenger who gave the briefcase to Filmer at Nottingham?’ he asked.

  ‘I sure do.’

  ‘John Millington has identified him from your photographs. He is Ivor Horfitz’s son, Jason. He’s not bright, so they say. Not up to much more than running errands. Delivering briefcases would be just about his mark.’

 
; ‘And he got that wrong, too, according to his father.’

  ‘Well, there you are. It doesn’t get us anywhere much, but that’s who he is. John Millington has issued photos to all the ring inspectors, so that if they see him they’ll report it. If Horfitz plans on using his son as an on-course errand boy regularly, we’ll make sure he knows we’re watching.’

  ‘He’d do better to find someone else.’

  ‘A nasty thought.’ He paused briefly. ‘How are you doing, your end?’

  ‘I haven’t seen Filmer yet. He’s staying tomorrow night at a hotel with most of the owners’ group, according to the travel company’s lists. Presumably he’ll be at the official lunch with the Ontario Jockey Club at Woodbine tomorrow. I’ll go to the races, but probably not to the lunch. I’ll see what he’s doing, as best I can.’ I told him about Bill Baudelaire’s mother, and said, ‘After we’ve started off on the train, if you want to get hold of me direct, leave a message with her, and I’ll telephone back to you or John Millington as soon as I’m able.’

  ‘It’s a bit hit or miss,’ he grumbled, repeating the number after I’d dictated it.

  ‘She’s an invalid,’ I added, and laughed to myself at his reaction.

  When he’d stopped spluttering, he said, ‘Tor, this is impossible.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. It’s an open line of communication, after all. Better to have one than not. And Bill Baudelaire suggested it himself. He must know she’s capable.’

  ‘All right then. Better than nothing.’ He didn’t sound too sure, though, and who could blame him. Brigade commanders weren’t accustomed to bedridden grandmothers manning field telephones. ‘I’ll be here at home on Sunday,’ he said. ‘Get through to me, will you, for last-minute gen both ways, before you board?’

  ‘Yes, certainly.’

  ‘You sound altogether,’ he said with a touch of disapproval, ‘suspiciously happy.’

  ‘Oh! Well … this train looks like being good fun.’

  ‘That’s not what you’re there for.’

  ‘I’ll do my best not to enjoy it.’

  ‘Insubordination will get you a firing squad,’ he said firmly, and put down his receiver forthwith.

  I put my own receiver down more slowly and the bell rang again immediately.

  ‘This is Bill Baudelaire,’ my caller said in his deep-down voice. ‘So you arrived in Toronto all right?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘I’ve got the information you asked for about Laurentide Ice. About why his owner sold a half-share.’

  ‘Oh, good.’

  ‘I don’t know that it is, very. In fact, not good at all. Apparently Filmer was over here in Canada at the end of last week enquiring of several owners who had horses booked on the train if they would sell. One of them mentioned it to me this morning and now I’ve talked to the others. He offered a fair price for a half-share, they all say. Or a third-share. Any toe-hold, it seems. I would say he methodically worked down the list until he came to Daffodil Quentin.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The owner of Laurentide Ice.’

  ‘Why is it bad news?’ I asked, taking the question from the disillusionment in his voice.

  ‘You’ll meet her. You’ll see,’ he said cryptically.

  ‘Can’t you tell me?’

  He sighed audibly. ‘Her husband, Hal Quentin, was a good friend of Canadian racing, but he died this time last year and left his string of horses to his wife. Three of them so far have died in accidents since then, with Mrs Quentin collecting the insurance.’

  ‘Three!’ I said. ‘In a year?’

  ‘Exactly. They’ve all been investigated but they all seem genuine. Mrs Quentin says it’s a dreadful coincidence and she is most upset.’

  ‘She would be,’ I said dryly.

  ‘Anyway, that is who has sold a half-share to Julius Filmer. What a pair! I phoned just now and asked her about the sale. She said it suited her to sell, and there was no reason not to. She says she is going to have a ball on the train.’ He sounded most gloomy, himself.

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ I said. ‘If she’s sold a half-share she can’t be planning to push Laurentide Ice off the train at high speed for the insurance.’

  ‘That’s a scurrilous statement.’ He was not shocked, however. ‘Will you be at Woodbine tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, but not at the lunch.’

  ‘All right. If we bump into each other, of course it will be as strangers.’

  ‘Of course,’ I agreed; and we said goodbyes and disconnected.

  Daffodil Quentin, I reflected, settling the receiver in its cradle, had at least not been intimidated into selling. No one on the business end of Filmer’s threats could be looking forward to having a ball in his company. It did appear that in order to get himself onto the train as an owner, he had been prepared to spend actual money. He had been prepared to fly to Canada to effect the sale, and to return to England to collect the briefcase from Horfitz at Nottingham on Tuesday, and to fly back to Canada, presumably, in time for tomorrow’s races.

  I wondered where he was at that moment. I wondered what he was thinking, hatching, setting in motion. It was comforting to think that he didn’t know I existed.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon doing some shopping and walking and taxi-riding around, getting reacquainted with one of the most visually entertaining cities in the world. I’d found it architecturally exciting six years earlier, and it seemed to me now not less but more so, with glimpses of its slender tallest-in-the-world free-standing tower with the onion bulge near its top appearing tantalisingly between angular high-rises covered with black glass and gold. And they had built a whole new complex, Harbourfront, since I’d been there before, a new face turned to Lake Ontario and the world.

  At six, having left my purchases at the hotel, I went back to Merry & Co’s warm pale office and found many of the gang still working. Nell, at her desk, naturally on the telephone, pointed mutely to her client chair, and I sat there and waited.

  Some of the murmurers were putting on coats, yawning, switching off computers, taking cans of cold drinks out of the large refrigerator and opening them with the carbonation hissing. Someone put out a light or two. The green plants looked exhausted. Friday night; all commercial passion spent. Thank God for Fridays.

  ‘I have to come in here tomorrow,’ Nell said with resignation, catching my thought. ‘And why I ever said I’d have dinner with you tonight I cannot imagine.’

  ‘You promised.’

  ‘I must have been mad.’

  I’d asked her after she’d shown me the train’s sleeping arrangements (which perhaps had been my subconscious making jumps unbeknown to me), and she’d said, ‘Yes, all right, I have to eat,’ and that had seemed a firm enough commitment.

  ‘Are you ready?’ I asked.

  ‘No, there are two more people I positively must talk to. Can you … er … wait?’

  ‘I’m quite good at it,’ I said equably.

  A few more lights went out. Some of those remaining shone on Nell’s fair hair, made shadows of her eyes and put hollows in her cheeks. I wondered about her, as one does. An attractive stranger; an’ unread book; a beginning, perhaps. But there had been other beginnings, in other cities, and I’d long outgrown the need to hurry. I might never yet have come to the conventional ending, but the present was greatly OK, and as for the future … we would see.

  I listened without concentration to her talking to someone called Lorrimore. ‘Yes, Mr Lorrimore, your flowers and your bar bottles will already be on the train when it comes into the station.… And the fruit, yes, that too.… The passengers are gathering at ten-thirty for the reception at the station …. Yes, we board at eleven-thirty and leave at twelve.… We’re looking forward to meeting you too … goodbye Mr Lorrimore.’ She glanced over at me as she began to dial her next number, and said, ‘The Lorrimores have the private car, the last car on the train. Hello, is that Vancouver racecourse …?’

  I li
stened to her discussing entry arrangements for the owners. ‘Yes, we’re issuing them all with the special club passes … and yes, the other passengers from the train will be paying for themselves individually, but we’re offering them group transport.…’ She put down the receiver eventually and sighed. ‘We’ve been asked to fix moderate price hotels and bus transport for so many of the racegoers that it’s like duplicating the whole tour. Could you wait for just one more call … or two?’

  We left the darkened office almost an hour later and even then she was still checking things off in her mind and muttering vaguely about not forgetting scissors and clips to go with the bandages for Ricky. We walked not very far to a restaurant called the Fluted Point People that she’d been to before and whose menu I had prospected earlier. Not very large, it had tables crammed into every cranny, each dimly lit by a candle lantern.

  ‘Who are the Fluted Point People,’ I asked, ‘in general?’

  ‘Heaven knows,’ Nell said.

  The waiter, who must have been asked a thousand times, said the fluted point people had lived on this land ten thousand years ago. Let’s not worry about them, he said.

  Nell laughed and I thought of ten thousand years and wondered who would be living on this land ten thousand years ahead. Fluted points, it transpired, described the stone tools in use over most of the continent: would our descendents call us the knife and fork people?

  ‘I don’t honestly care,’ Nell said, to those questions. ‘I’m hungry right now in Toronto today.’

  We did something about that in the shape of devilled smoked salmon followed by roast quail. ‘I hope this is all on your expense account,’ she said without anxiety as I ordered some wine, and I said, ‘Yes, of course’ untruthfully and thought there was no point in having money if one didn’t enjoy it. ‘Hamburgers tomorrow,’ I said, ‘to make up for it.’

  Nell nodded as if that were a normal bargain she well understood and said with a galvanic jump that she had forgotten to order a special limousine to drive the Lorrimores around at Winnipeg.