Decider

by Dick Francis

‘That’s the trouble, I can’t quite remember. But I can easily find out. I’d just rather find out without his knowing about it.’

  ‘Do you mean,’ Dart asked, ‘that he blew up the stands to get the commission to build the new ones?’

  ‘God,’ Roger said. ‘You do jump to conclusions.’

  ‘Keith thinks so. He said so.’

  ‘I think they just know you’re a builder,’ Roger said to me thoughtfully, ‘and, to be honest, at the moment that’s just what you look like.’

  I glanced down at my loose checked shirt and my baggy faded working jeans and acknowledged the convenient truth of it.

  ‘Won’t he know you,’ Roger asked, ‘if you trained at the same place?’

  ‘No. I was at least three years behind him and not very noticeable. He was one of the flashing stars. Different firmament to me. I don’t think we ever spoke. People like that are too wrapped up in their own affairs to learn the faces and names of junior intakes. And it wasn’t last week. It’s seventeen years now since I enrolled there.’

  When two architects met, the most normal opening gambit between them was, ‘Where were you taught?’ And one took preconceived ideas from the answer.

  To have learned architecture at Cambridge, for instance, indicated a likelihood of cautious conservation; at Bath, of anatomy before beauty; and at the Mackintosh in Glasgow, of partisan Scottishness. People who’d been to any of them knew how their fellows had been influenced. One understood a stranger because of the experiences shared.

  The Architectural Association, alma mater of both Yarrow and myself, tended to turn out innovative ultra-modernists who saw into the future and built people-coercive edifices cleverly of glass. The spirit of Le Corbusier reigned, even though the school itself stood physically in Bedford Square in London, in a beautifully proportioned Georgian terraced mansion often at odds with the lectures within.

  The library windows shone out, brightly lit always, into the night shadows of the square, celebrating distinction of knowledge, and if a certain arrogance crept into self-satisfied star students, perhaps the supreme excellence and thoroughness of the tuition excused it.

  The Association was mostly outside the state education system, which meant few student grants, which in turn meant that chiefly paying students went there, the intake having consequently changed slowly over the years from a preponderance of indigenous bohemian English to the offspring of wealthy Greeks, Nigerians, Americans, Iranians and Hong Kong Chinese, and I reckoned I’d learned a good deal and made unexpected friends from the mixture.

  I myself had emerged from the exhaustively practical, and sometimes metaphysical, teaching with Le Corbusier technology and humanist tendencies, and would never be revered in the halls that had nurtured me: restoring old ruins carved no fame for posterity.

  Dart asked curiously, ‘Do you have letters after your name?’

  I hesitated. ‘What? Yes, I do. They’re AADipl, which stands for Architectural Association Diploma. It may not mean much to the outside world generally, but to other architects, and to Yarrow, it’s pretty revealing.’

  ‘Sounds like Alcoholics Anonymous Dipsomaniac,’ Dart said.

  Roger laughed.

  ‘Keep that joke under wraps,’ I begged, and Dart said maybe he would.

  Mark, Marjorie’s chauffeur, joined us and told us disapprovingly that I was keeping Mrs Binsham waiting. She was sitting in the office tapping her foot.

  ‘Tell her I’ll come instantly,’ I said, and Mark went off with the message.

  ‘That brave man deserves the Victoria Cross,’ Dart grinned, ‘for conspicuous valour.’ I set off in Mark’s wake. ‘So do you,’ Dart shouted.

  Marjorie, stiff backed, was indeed displeased but, it transpired, not with Mark or myself. The chauffeur had been told to go for a walk. As for myself, I was invited to sit.

  ‘I’d rather stand, really.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I forgot.’ She gave me a short shirt-by-jeans inspection, as if uncertain how to categorise me because of my changing appearance.

  ‘I believe you’re a builder by trade,’ she began.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, as a builder, now that you’ve had a good look at the extent of the damage to the grandstand, what do you think?’

  ‘About restoring things as they were?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  I said, ‘As much as I understand that that’s what you’d like, I frankly think it would be a mistake.’

  She was obstinate. ‘But could it be done?’

  I said, ‘The whole structure may prove to be unsafe. The building’s old, though well built, I grant you. But there may be fractures that can’t be seen yet, and undoubtedly there are new stresses. Once the rubble is removed, more of the building could fall in. It would all need shoring up. I’m really sorry, but my advice would be to take it down and rebuild it from scratch.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear that.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘But could it be done so it was the same as before?’

  ‘Certainly. All the original plans and drawings are here, in this office.’ I paused. ‘But it would be a lost opportunity.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you side with Conrad!’

  ‘I don’t side with anyone. I’m just telling you honestly that you could improve the old stands enormously for modern comfort if you redesigned them.’

  ‘I don’t like the architect that Conrad’s thrusting down our throats. I don’t understand half of what he says, and the man’s condescending, can you believe?’

  I could certainly believe it. ‘He’ll find out his mistake,’ I said, smiling. ‘And, incidentally, if in the end you decide to modify the stands, it would be sensible to announce a competition in magazines architects read, asking for drawings to be submitted to a jury which you could appoint. Then you’d have a choice. You wouldn’t be in a take-it-or-leave-it situation with Wilson Yarrow who, the Colonel assures me, doesn’t know a jot about racing. One wouldn’t choose even a chair without sitting in it. The stands need to be comfortable as well as good looking.’

  She nodded thoughtfully. ‘You were going to look into this Yarrow’s background. Have you done it?’

  ‘It’s in hand.’

  ‘And about Keith’s debts?’

  ‘Working on it.’

  She made a ‘Hmph’ noise of disbelief, justifiably. ‘I suppose,’ she added, trying to be fair, ‘you’re finding it difficult to get about.’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s a holiday weekend, that’s another of the problems.’ I thought briefly. ‘Where does Keith live?’

  ‘Above his expectations.’

  I laughed. Marjorie primly smiled at her own wit.

  She said, ‘He lives in the Dower House on the estate. It was built for the widow of the first baron and, as she had a taste for ostentation, it is large. Keith pretends he owns it, but he doesn’t, he rents it. Since my brother has died, ownership passes to Conrad, of course.’

  I asked tentatively, ‘And… Keith’s source of income?’

  Marjorie disapproved of the question but on reflection answered: it was she, after all, who’d set me in motion.

  ‘His mother left him provided for. He was a beautiful looking little boy and young man, and she doted on him. Forgave him anything. Conrad and Ivan were always clumsy and plain and never made her laugh. She died ten years ago, I suppose. Keith inherited his money then, and I’d say he’s lost it.’

  I thought a bit, and asked, ‘Who is Jack’s father?’

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘Not relevant?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Does Keith gamble on horses? Or anything? Cards? Backgammon?’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll find out,’ she said. ‘He will never, of course, tell me anything.’

  I could think of only one way of getting a window into Keith’s affairs, and even that was problematical. I would have to borrow a car and drive it, for a start, when it was hard enough to walk. Gi
ve it two or three days, I thought. Say Tuesday.

  ‘What does Keith do with his time?’ I asked.

  ‘He says he has a job in the City. He may have had once, but I’m sure he’s lying about it now. He does lie, of course. He’s sixty-five, anyway. Retiring age, I’m told.’ She more or less sniffed. ‘If one has obligations, my brother used to say, one never retires.’

  Retiring wasn’t always one’s own choice, but why argue? Not everyone was a hereditary baron with dependent Honourables and a paternal nature. Not everyone had wealth enough to oil wheels and calm storms. My non-grandfather, I thought, must have been a nice man, whatever his faults; and my mother had liked him, and Dart also.

  ‘How about Ivan?’ I asked.

  ‘Ivan?’ Her eyebrows rose. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He has a garden centre?’

  She nodded. ‘My brother made over to him fifty acres of the estate. Years ago, that was, when Ivan was young. He’s good at growing things.’ She paused, and went on, ‘One doesn’t need to be intellectual to lead a contented and harmless life.’

  ‘One needs to be lucky.’

  She considered me, and nodded.

  I asked her, as it seemed she had run out of inquisition, if she would sign Roger’s and Oliver’s pay cheques.

  ‘What? Yes, I said I would. Tell the Colonel to remind me some time again.’

  ‘They’re here,’ I said, picking the envelope out of my still chair-draping jacket. ‘Do you have a pen with you?’

  She resignedly rummaged in a large handbag for a pen, took the cheques out of the envelope and wrote her name with precision, no flourish, on the lines provided.

  I said diffidently, ‘To save you the trouble in future, you directors could enable Conrad or Ivan or Dart to sign cheques. It only needs to have their signatures registered with the bank. There are bound to be many things, and not only salary cheques, needing signatures in the future. The Colonel has to have authorisations, in order to run things.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it!’

  ‘I know about business. I have a limited company.’

  She frowned. ‘Very well. All three of them. Will that do?’

  ‘Make it any two of the four of you. Then you will have safeguards, and the Colonel’s honesty will be beyond being queried by Keith or Rebecca.’

  She didn’t know whether to be annoyed or amused. ‘It’s taken you no time at all, has it, to lay bare our Stratton souls?’

  Without warning, and before I could answer, the office door opened fast and Keith and Hannah came in. Ignoring my presence they complained loudly to Marjorie that Conrad was talking to his architect as if the new plans would definitely be agreed.

  ‘He’s saying when,’ Keith griped, ‘not if. I’m wholly against this ridiculous project and you’ve got to stop it.’

  ‘Stop it yourself,’ his aunt told him tartly. ‘You make a lot of noise, Keith, but you don’t get things done. You want to get rid of me one minute, and you ask me to fight battles for you the next. And as you and Hannah are both here, you can apologise to Mr Morris for attacking him.’

  Keith and Hannah gave me matching looks of malevolence from between narrowed eyelids. From their point of view, I understood, their ultimate purpose had been frustrated by Marjorie and Ivan’s fortuitous arrival. I was still present, still standing, still and for ever the symbol of their having been detested and rejected unbearably. That their hatred was irrational made no difference. Irrational hatred, the world over, set the furrows flooding with an impure blood – though it was only France that actively encouraged massacre in its patriotic war cry, the Marseillaise still glorifying the sentiments of 1792.

  The impure blood at that time had been Austrian. Two hundred or so years later, blood-hatred flourished around the globe. Blood-hatred could almost be smelled in the manager’s office of Stratton Park. I had by my presence there already activated responses beyond Keith and Hannah’s control, and felt no confidence whatever that we’d come to the end of it.

  Only Marjorie, at that moment, stood between me and a continuation of what they’d intended to do earlier that morning. I thought wryly that every big and usually powerful weakling should have a staunch octogenarian bodyguard.

  Marjorie waited only briefly for the apology that would never come: and I could happily dispense for ever with apologies, I thought, if they would clearly see that no amount of Stratton money could cancel charges of manslaughter.

  Or half-brother slaughter. Or ex-wife’s son’s slaughter. Whatever.

  Amoeba-like, Strattons followed Strattons as if components of one organic mass, and Conrad with Jack and Ivan joined the company, also swelled by the foreign substance of Wilson Yarrow and completed by Dart, looking mischievously entertained, and Roger, trying to be inconspicuous. The crowd again was too big for the space.

  Wilson Yarrow didn’t know me. I gave him a flicking glance only, but he’d accorded me barely that. His attention was chiefly engaged by Conrad, whose suspicions had been aroused by Keith’s talking to Marjorie behind a closed door.

  Physically, Wilson Yarrow was remarkable not so much for his actual features as for his posture. His reddish brown hair, tall narrow-shouldered body, and square heavy jaw made no indelible statement. The way he held his head back, so that he could look down his nose, was unforgettable.

  Condescending, Marjorie had said of him. Convinced of his own superiority, I thought, and without modesty to cloak it.

  Conrad said, ‘Wilson Yarrow is of the opinion we should clear the site and start rebuilding immediately, and I’ve agreed to that proposal.’

  ‘My dear Conrad,’ Marjorie said in her stop-the-world voice, ‘you may not make such a decision. Your father had the right to make such decisions because he owned the racecourse. It now belongs to us all, and before anything is done, a majority of our board must agree to it.’

  Conrad looked affronted and Wilson Yarrow impatient, obviously thinking the old lady a no-account interruption.

  ‘It is clear,’ Marjorie went on in her crystal diction, ‘that we have to have a new grandstand.’

  ‘No!’ Keith interrupted. ‘We sell!’

  Marjorie paid him no attention. ‘I am sure Mr Yarrow is a highly competent architect, but for something as important as new stands I propose we put an advertisement in a magazine read by architects, inviting any who are interested to send us plans and proposals in a competition so that we could study various possibilities and then make a choice.’

  Conrad’s consternation was matched by Yarrow’s.

  ‘But Marjorie –’ Conrad began.

  ‘It would be the normal course of activity, wouldn’t it?’ she asked with open-eyed simplicity. ‘I mean, one wouldn’t buy even a chair without considering several for comfort and appearance and usefulness, would one?’

  She gave me a short, expressionless, passing glance. Double bravo, I thought.

  ‘As a director,’ Marjorie said, ‘I put forward a motion that we seek a variety of suggestions for a grandstand, and of course we will welcome Mr Yarrow’s among them.’

  Dead silence.

  ‘Second the motion, Ivan?’ Marjorie suggested.

  ‘Oh! Yes. Sensible. Very sensible.’

  ‘Conrad?’

  ‘Now look here, Marjorie…’

  ‘Use commonsense, Conrad,’ she urged.

  Conrad squirmed. Yarrow looked furious.

  Keith unexpectedly said, ‘I agree with you, Marjorie. You have my vote.’

  She looked surprised, but although she may have reckoned, as I did, that Keith’s motive was solely to impede the rebuilding, she pragmatically accepted his help.

  ‘Carried,’ she said without triumph. ‘Colonel, could you possibly find a suitable publication for an advertisement?’

  Roger said he was certain he could, and would see to it.

  ‘Splendid.’ Marjorie levelled a limpid gaze on the discomfited personage who’d made the error of condescension. ‘When you have your p
lans ready, Mr Yarrow, we’d be delighted to see them.’

  He said with clenched teeth, ‘Lord Stratton has a set.’

  ‘Really?’ Conrad squirmed further under a similar gaze. ‘Then, Conrad, we’d all like to see them, wouldn’t we?’

  Stratton heads nodded with various graduations of urgency.

  ‘They’re in my house,’ Conrad informed her grudgingly. ‘I suppose I could bring them to you sometime.’

  Marjorie nodded. ‘This afternoon, shall we say? Four o’clock.’ She looked at her watch. ‘My goodness! We’re all terribly late for lunch. Such a busy morning.’ She rose to her small feet. ‘Colonel, as our private dining room in the stands is, as I suppose, out of action, perhaps you could arrange somewhere suitable for us on Monday? Most of us, I imagine, will be attending.’

  Roger said again, faintly, that he would see to it.

  Marjorie, nodding benignly, made a grande dame exit and, surrendering herself to Mark’s solicitous care, was driven away.

  More or less speechlessly, the others followed, Conrad taking an angry Yarrow, leaving Roger and myself in quiet occupancy of the combat zone.

  ‘The old battleaxe!’ Roger said with admiration.

  I handed him his pay cheques. He looked at the signature.

  ‘How did you do that?’ he said.

  CHAPTER 9

  Roger spent the afternoon with the racecourse’s consultant electrician, whose men by-passed the main grandstand while restoring power to everywhere else. Circuits that hadn’t fused by themselves had been disconnected prudently by Roger, it seemed. ‘Fire,’ he explained, ‘is the last thing we need.’

  A heavy-duty cable in an insulating tube was run underground by a trenching machine to the Members’ car park, for lights, power and refrigerators in the big top. ‘Never forget champagne on a racecourse,’ Roger said, not joking.

  The investigators in the ruins had multiplied and had brought in scaffolding and cutters. At one point they erected and bolted together a long six-foot-high fence, replacing the cordoning tape. ‘We could lose priceless clues to souvenir hunters,’ one told me. ‘Monday’s crowd, left alone, could put piranhas to shame.’

  I said to one of the bombfinders, ‘If you’d been drilling upwards of thirty holes into the walls of a stairway, would you have posted a look-out?’