The Edge

by Dick Francis

  ‘Something’s going on that I don’t understand,’ she said, locking the entrance door behind me and leading the way to the central space where her chair stood beside the innocent water tank.

  ‘What sort of thing?’ I asked, following her.

  She mutely pointed further forward up the car, and I walked on until I came to the final space between the stalls, and there, in a sort of nest made of hay bales, one of the grooms half lay, half sat, curled like an embryo and making small moaning noises.

  I went back to Leslie Brown. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know. He was drunk last night, they all were, but this doesn’t look like an ordinary hangover.’

  ‘Did you ask the others?’

  She sighed. ‘They don’t remember much about last night. They don’t care what’s the matter with him.’

  ‘Which horse is he with?’

  ‘Laurentide Ice.’

  I’d have been surprised, I supposed, if she’d said anything else.

  ‘That’s the horse, isn’t it,’ I asked, ‘whose trainer sent separate numbered individual bags of food, because another of Mrs Quentin’s horses had died because of eating the wrong things?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And this boy was with the horse all the time in the barns at Winnipeg?’

  ‘Yes, of course. They exercised the horses and looked after them, and they all came back to the train in horse vans yesterday after the races, while the train was still in the siding. I came with them. There’s nothing wrong with any of the horses, I assure you.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘Laurentide Ice as well?’

  ‘See for yourself.’

  I walked round looking at each horse but in truth they all appeared healthy and unaffected, even Upper Gumtree and Flokati who would have been excused seeming thin and fatigued after their exertions. Most of them had their heads out over the stall doors, sure sign of interest: a few were a pace or two back, semi-dreaming. Laurentide Ice watched me with a bright glacial eye, in far better mental health than his attendant.

  I returned to Leslie Brown and asked her the groom’s name.

  ‘Lenny,’ she said. She consulted a list. ‘Leonard Higgs.’

  ‘How old is he?’

  ‘About twenty, I should think.’

  ‘What’s he like, usually?’

  ‘Like the others. Full of foul language and dirty jokes.’ She looked disapproving. ‘Every other word beginning with f.’

  ‘When did all this moaning and retreating start?’

  ‘He was lying there all night. The other boys said it was his turn to be in here, but it wasn’t really, only he was paralytic, and they just dumped him in the hay and went back to the party. He started the moaning about an hour ago and he won’t answer me at all.’ She was disturbed by him, and worried, I thought, that his behaviour might be held to be her responsibility.

  Rather to her surprise, I took off my yellow waistcoat and striped tie and gave them to her to hold. If she would sit down for a while, I suggested, I would try to sort Lenny out.

  Meekly for her, she agreed. I left her perching with my badges of office across her trousered knees and returned to the total collapse in the hay.

  ‘Lenny,’ I said, ‘give it a rest.’

  He went on with the moaning, oblivious.

  I sat down beside him on one of the hay bales and put my mouth near his one visible ear.

  ‘Shut up,’ I said, very loudly.

  He jumped and he gasped and after a short pause he went back to moaning, though artificially now, it seemed to me.

  ‘If you’re sick from beer,’ I said forcefully, ‘it’s your own bloody fault, but I’ll get you something to make you feel better.’

  He curled into a still tighter ball, tucking his head down into his arms as if shielding it from a blow. It was a movement impossible to misconstrue: what he felt, besides alcohol sickness, was fear.

  Fear followed Julius Apollo Filmer like a spoor; the residue of his passing. Lenny, frightened out of his wits, was a familiar sight indeed.

  I undid the top buttons of my shirt, loosening the collar, and rolled up my cuffs, aiming for informality, and I slid down until I was sitting on the floor with my head on the same level as Lenny’s.

  ‘If you’re shit scared,’ I said distinctly, ‘I can do something about that, too.’

  Nothing much happened. He moaned a couple of times and fell silent and after a long while, I said, ‘Do you want help, or don’t you? This is a good offer. If you don’t take it, whatever you’re afraid of will probably happen.’

  After a lengthy pause he rolled his head round, still wrapped in his arms, until I could see his face. He was red-eyed, bony, unshaven and dribbling, and what came out of his slack mouth wasn’t a groan but a croak.

  ‘Who the bleeding hell are you?’ He had an English accent and a habitual pugnacity of speech altogether at odds with his present state.

  ‘Your bit of good luck,’ I said calmly.

  ‘Piss off,’ he said.

  ‘Right.’ I got to my feet. ‘Too bad,’ I said. ‘Go on feeling sorry for yourself, and see where it gets you.’

  I walked away from him, out of his sight.

  ‘Here,’ he said, croaking, making it sound like an order.

  I stayed where I was.

  ‘Wait,’ he said urgently.

  I did wait, but I didn’t go back to him. I heard the hay rustling and then a real groan as the hangover hit him, and finally he came staggering into view, keeping his balance with both hands on the green outside of Flokati’s stall. He stopped when he saw me. Blinking, swaying, the Race Train T-shirt torn and filthy, he looked stupid, pathetic and spineless.

  ‘Go back and sit down,’ I said neutrally. ‘I’ll bring you something.’

  He sagged against the green stall but finally turned round and shuffled back the way he’d come. I went down to Leslie Brown and asked if she had any aspirins.

  ‘Not aspirins, but these,’ she said, proffering a box from a canvas holdall. ‘These might do.’

  I thanked her, filled a polystyrene cup with water and went back to see how Lenny was faring: he was sitting on the hay with his head in his hands looking a picture of misery and a lot more normal.

  ‘Drink,’ I said, giving him the water. ‘And swallow these.’

  ‘You said you could help me.’

  ‘Yes. Drink the pills for a start.’

  He was accustomed, on the whole, to doing what he was told, and he must have been reasonably good at his job, I supposed, to have been sent across Canada with Laurentide Ice. He swallowed the pills and drank the water and not surprisingly they made no immediate difference to his physical woes.

  ‘I want to get out of here,’ he said with a spurt of futile violence. ‘Off this bleeding train. Off this whole effing trip. And I’ve got no money. I lost it. It’s gone.’

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I can get you off.’

  ‘Straight up?’ He was surprised.

  ‘Straight up.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘At Calgary. In a couple of hours. You can leave then. Where do you want to go?’

  He stared. ‘You’re having me on,’ he said.

  ‘No. I’ll get you taken care of, and I’ll see you get a ticket to wherever you want.’

  The dawning hope in his face became clouded with confusion.

  ‘What about old Icy?’ he said. ‘Who’ll look after him?’

  It was the first thought he’d had which hadn’t been raw self-pity, and I felt the first flicker of compassion.

  ‘We’ll get another groom for old Icy,’ I promised. ‘Calgary’s full of horse people.’

  It wasn’t exactly true. The Calgary I’d known had been one of the six biggest cities in Canada, half the size of Montreal and on a population par with central Toronto. Time might have changed the statistics slightly, but probably not much. Calgary was no dusty old-west cattle town, but a sky-scrape
red modern city set like a glittering oasis in the skirts of the prairies: and the Stampede, in which one July I’d worked as a bronco rider, was a highly organised ten-day rodeo with a stadium, adjacent art and stage shows and all the paraphernalia and razzamatazz of big-time tourist entertainment. But Calgary, even in October, definitely had enough horse people around to provide a groom for Laurentide Ice.

  I watched Lenny Higgs decide to jettison his horse, his job and his unbearable present. Fearful that I would bungle the whole business, because I’d never before actually tried this sort of unscrambling myself, I strove to remember John Millington’s stated methods with people like the chambermaid at Newmarket. Offer protection, make any promise that might get results, hold out carrots, be supportive, ask for help.

  Ask for help.

  ‘Could you tell me why you don’t want to go on to Vancouver?’ I said.

  I made the question sound very casual, but it threw him back into overall panic, even if not into the foetal position.

  ‘No.’ He shivered with intense alarm. ‘Piss off. It’s none of your effing business.’

  Without fuss I withdrew from him again, but this time I went further away, beyond Leslie Brown, right down to the exit door.

  ‘Stay there,’ I said to her, passing. ‘Don’t say anything to him, will you?’

  She shook her head, folding her thin arms over my waistcoat and across her chest. The dragon, I thought fleetingly, with the fire in abeyance.

  ‘Here,’ Lenny shouted behind me. ‘Come back.’

  I didn’t turn round.

  He wailed despairingly at the top of his voice, ‘I want to get off this train.’

  It was, I thought, a serious cry for help.

  I went back slowly. He was standing between Flokati’s stall and Sparrowgrass’s, swaying unsteadily, watching me with haggard eyes.

  When I was near him, I said simply, ‘Why?’

  ‘He’ll kill me if I tell you.’

  ‘That’s rubbish,’ I said.

  ‘It isn’t.’ His voice was high. ‘He said I’d effing die.’

  ‘Who said?’

  ‘Him.’ He was trembling. The threat had been of sufficient power for him to believe it.

  ‘Who is him?’ I asked. ‘One of the owners?’

  He looked blank, as if I were talking gibberish.

  ‘Who is him?’ I asked again.

  ‘Some bloke … I never saw him before.’

  ‘Look,’ I said calmingly, ‘let’s go back, sit on the hay, and you tell me why he said he’d kill you.’ I pointed over his shoulders towards the bales and with a sort of exhausted compliance he stumbled that way and flopped into a huddled mess.

  ‘How did he frighten you?’ I asked.

  ‘He … came to the barns … asked for me.’

  ‘Asked for you by name?’

  He nodded glumly.

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Yesterday,’ he said hoarsely. ‘During the races.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘He said he knew all about old Icy’s food being in numbered bags.’ Lenny sounded aggrieved. ‘Well, it wasn’t a secret, was it?’

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘He said he knew why … because Mrs Quentin’s other horse died …’ Lenny stopped and looked as if an abyss had opened before him. ‘He started saying I done it …’

  ‘Done what?’

  Lenny was silent.

  ‘Said you’d poisoned Mrs Quentin’s other horse?’ I suggested.

  ‘I never did it. I didn’t.’ He was deeply agitated. ‘I never.’

  ‘But this man said you did?’

  ‘He said I would go to jail for it, and “they do bad things to boys like you in jail”, he said.’ He shivered. ‘I know they do. And he said … “Do you want AIDS, because you’ll get it in jail, a pretty boy like you.” ’

  Pretty, at that moment, he did not look.

  ‘So what next?’ I prompted.

  ‘Well, I … Well, I …’ he gulped, ‘I said I never did it, it wasn’t me … and he went on saying I’d go to jail and get AIDS and he went on and on … and I told him … I told him …’

  ‘Told him what?’

  ‘She’s a nice lady,’ he wailed. ‘I didn’t want to … he made me …’

  ‘Was it Mrs Quentin,’ I asked carefully, ‘who poisoned her horse?’

  He said miserably, ‘Yes. No. See … she gave me this bag of treats … that’s what she said they were, treats … and to give them to her horse when no one was looking … See, I didn’t look after that horse of hers, it was another groom. So I gave her horse the bag of treats private, like … and it got colic and blew up and died … Well, I asked her, after. I was that scared … but she said it was all dreadful, she’d no idea her darling horse would get colic, and let’s not say anything about it, she said, and she gave me a hundred dollars, and I didn’t … I didn’t want to be blamed, see?’

  I did see.

  I said, ‘So when you told this man about the treats, what did he say?’

  Lenny looked shattered. ‘He grinned like a shark … all teeth … and he says … if I say anything about him to anybody … he’ll see I get … I’ll get …’ He finished in a whisper, ‘AIDS.’

  I sighed. ‘Is that how he threatened to kill you?’

  He nodded weakly, as if spent.

  ‘What did he look like?’ I asked.

  ‘Like my dad.’ He paused. ‘I hated my dad.’

  ‘Did he sound like your dad?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘He wasn’t a Brit.’

  ‘Canadian?’

  ‘Or American.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, running out of questions, ‘I’ll see you don’t get AIDS.’ I thought things over. ‘Stay in the car until we get to Calgary. Ms Brown will get one of the other grooms to bring your bag here. The horse car is going to be unhitched from the train, and the horses are going by motor van to some stables for two days. All the grooms are going with them, as I expect you know. You go with the other grooms. And don’t worry. Someone will come to find you and take you away, and bring another groom for Icy.’ I paused to see if he understood, but it seemed he did. ‘Where do you want to go from Calgary?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said dully. ‘Have to think.’

  ‘All right. When the someone comes for you, tell him then what you want to do.’

  He looked at me with a sort of wonderment. ‘Why are you bothering?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t like frighteners.’

  He shuddered. ‘My dad frightened the living daylights out of people … and me and Mum … and someone stabbed him, killed him … served him right.’ He paused. ‘No one ever helped the people he frightened.’ He paused again, struggling for the unaccustomed word, and came up with it, ‘Thanks.’

  With tie and buttons all correctly fastened, Tommy went back to the dining car. Zak was just finishing a scene in which old Ben, the groom who had been importuning Raoul for money on Toronto station, had been brought in from the racegoers’ part of the train to give damning (false) evidence against Raoul for having doped the Bricknells’ horses, a charge flatly denied by Raoul who contrived to look virtuous and possibly guilty, both at the same time. Sympathy on the whole ended on Raoul’s side because of Ben’s whining nastiness, and Zak told everyone that a Most Important Witness would be coming to Chateau Lake Louise that evening to give Damaging Testimony. Against whom? some people asked. Ah, said Zak mysteriously, vanishing towards the corridor, only time would tell.

  Emil, Oliver, Cathy and I set the tables for lunch and served its three courses. Filmer didn’t materialise, but Daffodil did, still shaken and angry as at breakfast. Her suitcase was packed, it appeared, and she was adamant about leaving the party at Calgary. No one, it seemed, had been able to find out from her exactly what the matter was, and the lovers’ tiff explanation had gained ground.

  I served wine carefully and listened, but it was the appealing prospect of two days in the mountains rather than
Daffodil’s troubles that filled most of the minds.

  When Calgary appeared like sharp white needles on the prairie horizon and everyone began pointing excitedly, I told Emil I would do my best to return for the dishwashing and sloped off up the train to George’s office.

  Would the credit-card telephone work in Calgary? Yes, it would. He waved me towards it as the train slowed and told me I’d got fifty minutes. He himself, as usual, would be outside, supervising.

  I got through to Mrs Baudelaire, who sounded carefree and sixteen.

  ‘Your photograph is on its way,’ she said without preamble. ‘But it won’t get to Calgary in time. Someone will be driving from Calgary to Chateau Lake Louise later this afternoon, and they are going to take it to your Miss Richmond.’

  ‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘But I’m afraid there’s been no word from Val Catto about your numbers.’

  ‘It can’t be helped.’

  ‘Anything else?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I need to talk to Bill direct.’

  ‘What a shame, I’ve been enjoying this.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Please … so have I. It’s only that it’s more than a message and question and answer. It’s long … and complicated.’

  ‘My dear young man, don’t apologise. Bill was still in Winnipeg ten minutes ago. I’ll call him straight away. Do you have a number?’

  ‘Um, yes.’ I read her the number on the train’s handset. ‘The sooner the better, would you tell him?’

  ‘Talk to you later,’ she said, and went away.

  I waited restlessly through ten wasted minutes before the phone rang.

  Bill’s deep voice reverberated in my ear. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘On the train in Calgary station.’

  ‘My mother says it’s urgent.’

  ‘Yes, but chiefly because this cellular telephone is in the Conductor’s office and only works in cities.’

  ‘Understood,’ he said. ‘Fire away.’

  I told him about Daffodil’s departure and Lenny Higgs’s frightened collapse; about what she had not said, and he had.

  Bill Baudelaire at length demanded, ‘Have I got this straight? This Lenny Higgs said Daffodil Quentin got him to give her horse something to eat, from which the horse got colic and died?’