Shattered

by Dick Francis

“One of your officers did come around here the following morning,” I said, “but there was far more interest in the money stolen with the tape.”

  “Did Doctor Force steal the money as well?” asked the super, looking at Force.

  “Yes,” I replied. “But I think that was just an opportunist theft which he might have thought would somehow smokescreen the removal of the tape.”

  Doctor Force listened impassionately, his bloodied face giving away nothing.

  “Anyway,” continued the professor, who did not welcome the interruption, “somehow all the thefts failed to get back the tape they wanted, and Doctor Force, with assistance from Rose Payne and others, has been trying here to coerce Mr. Logan to reveal its whereabouts. He tells me he hasn’t got it.”

  “And have you?” asked the voice of authority.

  “No,” I replied, “but I think I know who has.”

  They all looked at me. Adam Force, Lawson-Young, the superintendent and even Hickory, who had been listening with his good ear, they all waited expectantly.

  Into this tableau swept Marigold, floating in emerald silk with gold tassels and brushing aside the young constable who tried to stand in her way. In her wake came Bon-Bon, Victor, Daniel and the other children like the tail of a kite.

  Marigold demanded to see how her trophy was getting along, but was brought up sharply by the sight of the blanket-covered form in the workshop and the mass of evidence gatherers crawling cautiously around it on their hands and knees. Bon-Bon, realizing the enormity of the situation, swept her brood back out of the door, leaving just her mother and Victor inside, both of them stock-still, transfixed, living through their eyes.

  “Gerard darling,” Marigold exclaimed. “What is going on? And where is Worthington?”

  “Marigold, my dear,” I said wearily, “there’s been a disaster. Please go across the road to the hotel and wait for me there.”

  She seemed not to hear, her eyes steadfastly on the blanket. “Where is Worthington?” Her voice began to rise. “Where’s Worthington? Oh my God.”

  I took her in my arms. “Marigold, Marigold, he’s all right. I promise. That’s not Worthington.”

  She sobbed on my shoulder, near to collapse.

  Victor turned to me and said, his voice barely more than a whisper, “It’s not a game anymore, is it?”

  The question needed no answer, and presently the young constable led him and Marigold across to the Wychwood Dragon.

  “So who is Blackmask Four?” asked Lawson-Young into the silence when they had gone.

  “Who?” said the superintendent. “What are you talking about?”

  The professor told him. “Gerard was attacked by four people in black masks outside his shop here. Three of them were Rose Payne, her father Eddie Payne and Norman Osprey. Gerard told me earlier today that he had worked out the identity of the fourth, so,” he turned to me and said with faith, “who is it and where is my research?”

  “I don’t think Blackmask Four has the tape,” I replied.

  “What!” exclaimed the professor. His shoulders dropped, his expectations had been so high and he took it now that I was leading him only to another cul-de-sac, another dead end.

  I put him right. “My fourth assailant, Blackmask Four, was just a hired help and I’m not sure he even knew exactly what he was looking for.” But he knew, I thought, how to inflict maximum damage to my wrists. “He is, however, a dab hand with a baseball bat and anesthetic gas.”

  “Who is it, for God’s sake?” The professor was finding it difficult to stifle his impatience, as was the superintendent, yet it wasn’t the easiest disclosure I’d ever made. Still ...

  “Who was the fourth man, Hickory?” I asked.

  Hickory looked up from where he was kneeling on the floor, still holding a dressing to his ear.

  “Why are you asking me?” he said.

  “You bunched my fingers.”

  “Of course I didn’t.”

  “I’m afraid you did,” I said. “You held my hand against a wall ready for a baseball bat to smash my wrist.”

  “You must be crazy. Why would I attack you? Why you of all people?”

  It was a piercing question and one with a complex answer. He didn’t answer it. But we both knew what he had intended.

  “Did you do it for money?” I asked.

  I suspected that it was for more convoluted reasons than that. Something to do with my ability with glassblowing and his comparative lack of it. Envy was a strong emotion and, I reckoned, he wouldn’t have needed a whole lot of persuasion to oppose me.

  He still refused to admit it. “You’re crazy, you are,” he said, getting to his feet and turning away as if looking for some quick escape.

  “The green-and-white laces,” I said.

  He stopped dead and turned back.

  I went on, “You wore them here the day Martin Stukely was killed, and you wore them again the following day when you stole the tapes from his house, the day you hit me with the orange cylinder. Martin’s eldest son, Daniel, saw the laces and told the police about them.”

  Hickory advanced a step or two, his ear clearly hurting.

  His poise cracked.

  “You’re so fucking clever,” he said. “I wish we had broken your wrists.”

  The superintendent stopped leaning on the half-wall and stood up straight.

  But Hickory had only just started.

  “You and your fancy ways and your condescending comments about my work. I hate you and this workshop. I’m a damn good glassblower and I deserve more recognition.” He raised his chin and sneered.

  “One day,” he went on, “John Hickory will be a name worth knowing and people will smash fucking Logan Glass to get to mine.”

  Such a shame, I thought. He really did have some talent but, I suspected, it would never be allowed to develop as it should. Arrogance and a belief in skills he didn’t have would smother those he did.

  “And Rose?” I asked.

  “Stupid bitch,” he said, holding his hand to his throbbing ear, “bloody mad she is. Tie you up, she said; use you as a hostage, she said. Nothing about frying my effing ear. Hope she rots in hell.”

  I hoped she’d rot on earth.

  “She promised me my own place,” Hickory said. “Claimed she’d close you down. Her and that stupid father of hers.” He began to realize the hole he was digging for himself. “They put me up to it. It was their fault, not mine.”

  He looked wretchedly at the rapt faces around him.

  “It wasn’t my fault. It was their idea.”

  No one believed him. It had been Hickory who had reported all to Rose. Hickory had had the “binocs” in Broadway.

  “So where is the tape?” asked George Lawson-Young.

  “I don’t know,” replied Hickory. “Rose said that it must have been in Stukely’s house or in Logan’s but I’ve sat through hours of bloody horse racing and glassblowing and, I’m telling you, there was no tape of medical stuff.”

  I believed him. Otherwise, I thought ruefully, I might have been saved a couple of beatings and Pernickety Paul would still be lying around in shop doorways.

  A paramedic appeared and said that it was time to take Hickory to the hospital to dress his burn. The superintendent, roused into action, arrested Hickory. “You do not have to say anything ...”

  “Too bloody late,” retorted Hickory, as he was led off to the ambulance by a white-overalled police officer and the paramedic.

  The super turned his attention to Doctor Red-Beard Force, who had listened in silence throughout.

  He said, his speech always in the pattern of officialese, “Well, Doctor Force, can you enlighten us as to the whereabouts of a videotape containing medical research results stolen from the professor here?”

  Force said nothing. It seemed that he had at least learned one lesson from our discussion under the fir trees in Lynton.

  “Come on, Adam, tell us.” The professor, I saw, still had some vestige of friendsh
ip for the man before him dripping blood from his beard onto my smooth brick floor.

  Force looked at him with disdain and kept silent.

  In his turn, he too was arrested and taken away for wound stitching and fingerprinting. “You do not have to say anything....” So he didn’t.

  In time the gallery, showroom and workshop began to clear. The coroner’s representative arrived and supervised the relocation of Paul to the local morgue. The other officers stopped work to stand and watch the sorry procession of undertakers and their highly regarded and valued burden move through the gallery to the door. There were tears in my eyes as well as in theirs. He had been a good man as well as a good policeman.

  A few more photographs were taken and a few more pieces of evidence were collected. Blue-and-white “Do Not Cross” tape was strung about, doors were locked and guarded, and the professor and I were gently eased out to the street into the gray appropriate drizzle.

  The superintendent again asked me to accompany him to the police station to make a full statement, though this time, there was more warmth in his manner. I agreed, but first, I asked, could we all go over to the Wychwood Dragon Hotel as I was thirsty and needed a jug of tea. I looked at my cheap watch. Amazingly it was still morning though it felt to me more like teatime must have come and gone.

  They were in the residents’ downstairs sitting room. Bon-Bon and her four sat tightly side by side on the wide sofa in descending height from the right. Coca-Colas had been bought and a line of empty bottles with straws sat on a coffee table. Marigold occupied a deep squashy armchair while Worthington perched on its arm by her side. The manner in which Marigold clung to Worthington’s hand reminded me of his flytrap warning. He didn’t appear to protest.

  The Dragon poured tea into large millennium souvenir mugs and told us that Pamela Jane, still badly shocked, had been given a pill by the police doctor and dispatched to bed upstairs.

  Victor stood by the window unable to remove his eyes from Logan Glass opposite. I took my tea over and joined him.

  Without turning his head he said, “I suppose my aunt Rose will be inside for a long time?”

  “Yes,” I said. “A very long time.” For life, I thought, either in prison or a secure mental hospital. Police killers didn’t get early parole.

  He stood in silence a moment longer, then turned and looked me straight in the eye. “Good,” he said. “It might give me and Mom a chance.”

  I turned and took Bon-Bon out into the hotel lobby. I needed her to do me a favor. Certainly, she said, and trotted off to the telephone box beneath the stairs.

  I went back into the sitting room to finish my tea and soon after Bon-Bon returned with a smiling nod.

  I thought about the events of the morning, and wondered if there had been another way.

  Punty irons in anyone’s hand had to be swung around carefully. In Rose’s hands a punty iron tipped with semi-liquid glass had been literally a lethal weapon, and it had seemed to me that as it was me she was after, however weird and mistaken her beliefs, it was I who ought to stop her.

  I’d tried to stop her with the shattering horse and I hadn’t succeeded. It had torn a hole in her lover and stoked her own anger, and I’d thought then, if I could blind her she would stop, so I’d thrown the powder, but blinding her had made her worse.

  Paul had died.

  If I hadn’t tried to stop her, if instead I had surrendered at once to her as she’d demanded, then Paul would be alive. But, I reflected, searching for comfort, I couldn’t have given her the tape she demanded as I hadn’t known exactly where it was.

  I’d done my best, and my best had killed.

  The voice of the superintendent brought me back to the present. He said he was eager to get to the police station to interview his prisoners and also that he was less eager, but duty demanded it, to visit Detective Constable Paul Cratchet’s family. “Would the professor and Mr. Logan come with me now, please, sirs?” he said.

  “Another cup of tea?” I replied.

  The super was not happy. “Contrary to popular belief, the tea at the station house is quite drinkable. So, if you please.”

  I needed more time.

  Settling into another deep armchair, I said, “Just a moment to sit down? I’m exhausted. How about something to eat before we go?”

  “We have a canteen at the station. You can have something there.” The voice of authority had spoken and there seemed little else to do but comply.

  I rose slowly to my feet and with relief found my expected guest hurrying at last through the door.

  “Hello, Priam,” I said.

  He looked past me towards the tall, elegantly suited George Lawson-Young. He flicked a glance at Bon-Bon as if to say, “Is this the one?”

  “Priam,” I repeated, “it’s so good of you to come. Priam Jones, can I introduce Superintendent Shepherd of the West Mercia police.”

  Priam turned slowly my way and instinctively shook an offered hand.

  “I’m sorry?” he said, puzzled. “I don’t quite understand. Bon-Bon called me to say that she was with a potential racehorse owner and I should get down here pronto if I wanted the business. Interrupted a good lunch too, I can tell you.”

  He looked around him still searching for the elusive owner.

  “Priam,” I regained his attention, “that wasn’t quite the truth. I asked Bon-Bon to make that call because I needed to talk to you.” He wasn’t pleased. Far from it.

  “What’s wrong with the bloody telephone if you needed a chat, although about what I can’t imagine.” He looked down at four sets of childhood eyes staring up at him. “Hmp... sorry.”

  I said, “I needed a chat about a videotape.”

  “Not that bl ... er ... videotape business again,” he said. “I have told you already, I don’t have any videotape.”

  Daniel said distinctly, “I know where there’s a videotape.”

  “Shhhh, darling,” said Bon-Bon.

  “But I do know where a tape is,” Daniel persisted.

  I had learned to take Daniel very seriously indeed.

  I squatted down to his level on the sofa. “Where is the videotape, Daniel?” I said.

  “I think it must be worth at least three or four gold coins,” he replied.

  “What does he mean?” asked Professor Lawson-Young.

  “It’s a game we have been playing,” I said. “I give Daniel treasure if he gives or finds me information.” I turned back to Daniel. “I think it might indeed be worth three or four gold coins.”

  “A whole bagful of treasure,” said the professor, “if it’s the right tape.”

  Daniel looked positively delighted at the prospect.

  “It’s in Daddy’s car,” he said. “It’s in the pocket on the back of Daddy’s seat. I saw it there yesterday when Mommy brought us to your shop.”

  He looked at me questioningly and beamed when I told him, “Ten gold coins this time if the professor agrees.”

  George Lawson-Young, speechless, nodded his head until it seemed it might fall off.

  Daniel said, “I like finding things for Gerard. I’ll always look for things for him.”

  Priam shuffled uneasily beside me.

  I said to him, “Why did you switch the tapes?”

  “I told you ...,” he started.

  “I know what you told me,” I interrupted. “It was a lie.” Discard the lies, the professor had told me in Bristol, and I would be left with the truth. I asked again, “Why did you switch the tapes?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “I thought,” he said, “that the tape Eddie Payne passed to you was one showing the hiding place of an antique necklace. Worth millions I’d heard from someone. I found it in your raincoat that night and I thought, with Martin dead, no one would know if I kept it.”

  Half-truths and misconceptions had woven a path to death and destruction.

  Priam went on, “I took another tape from Martin’s den, one with racing on it, and wrapped it in the pape
r and put it back in your raincoat pocket. When I played the original tape at home that night I discovered that it was all unintelligible mumbo jumbo with nothing about a necklace. So I just put it back in Martin’s car when I drove it back to Bon-Bon’s the next day.”

  He looked around him. “No harm done. You have the tape back. No need for the police.”

  No harm done. Oh God, how wrong he was.

  It was four days before the police would allow me back into Logan Glass.

  Broadway had been the center of a media circus. The Dragon from over the road had previously said, “You were always news in this town, lover” and, for filling her rooms, she allowed me use of her best suite and paraded her little glass animals along a shelf in the lobby with a notice offering duplicates for sale.

  Marigold, her natural competitor in the matter of saris, caftans, eyelashes and “Darling,” wandered in and out waiting for me to start again on her trophy. Worthington, who had been upgraded from her chauffeur to her arm-in-arm companion, was dispatched with me to collect the necklace from the bank. Marigold secured total victory over the Dragon by wearing it day and night and finally buying it from me outright at huge expense.

  Rose, Norman Osprey, Doctor Force and Hickory had been remanded in custody while Eddie had been remanded in the hospital, his hands a mess.

  Priam, not understanding the fuss, had been given police bail, which meant that his passport had been confiscated. “Most inconvenient,” he had declared. “Why have I been treated like a common criminal?” Because he was one, Worthington had told him and anyone else who’d listen.

  Professor George Lawson-Young had been given the tape from Martin’s car. There had been a few ugly moments when the superintendent had tried to hang on to it as evidence. Having once lost the information it contained, Lawson-Young had no intention of allowing it out of his sight again. The police had reluctantly consented to his taking it away briefly to make a copy.

  Catherine, cuddling in my arms every night, kept me up-to-date with the news from the police station.

  Rose did little else but scream abuse, most of it in my direction it seemed.