by Dick Francis
‘Where is your father?’ she said.
‘When did you last see your father?’ I amended.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘That picture by Orchardson.’
‘Stop playing games. Where is Malcolm?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘You’re lying.’
‘Why do you want to find him?’
‘Why?’ She was astonished. ‘Because he’s out of his mind.’ She dug into her capacious handbag and brought out an envelope, which she thrust towards me. ‘Read that.’
I opened the envelope and found a small piece of newspaper inside, a snipped paragraph without headline or provenance.
It said:
Second-string British contender is Blue Clancy, second in last year’s Derby and winner this year of Royal Ascot’s King Edward VII Stakes. Owner Ramsey Osborn yesterday hedged his Arc bets by selling a half-share in his four-year-old colt to arbitrageur Malcolm Pembroke, who launched into bloodstock only this week with a two million guineas yearling at the Premium Sales.
Ouch, I thought.
‘Where did it come from?’ I asked.
‘What does it matter where it came from? That new “Racing Patter” column in the Daily Towncrier, as a matter of fact. 1 was drinking coffee this morning when I read it and nearly choked. The point is, is it true?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Yes,’ I said again. ‘Malcolm bought half of Blue Clancy. Why shouldn’t he?’
‘Sometimes,’ my mother said forcefully, ‘you are so stupid I could hit you.’ She paused for breath. ‘And what exactly is an arbitrageur?’
‘A guy who makes money by buying low and selling high.’
‘Oh. Gold.’
‘And foreign currencies. And shares. And maybe racehorses.’
She was unmodified. ‘You know perfectly well he’s just throwing his money away to spite everybody.’
‘He didn’t like Moira being killed. He didn’t like being attacked himself. I shouldn’t think he’ll stop spending until he knows whether we have or haven’t a murderer in the family, and even then …’ I smiled, ‘he’s getting a taste for it.’
Joyce stared. ‘Moira was murdered by an intruder,’ she said.
I didn’t answer.
She took a large swallow of her vodka and tonic and looked at me bleakly. She had been barely twenty when I was born, barely nineteen when Malcolm had whisked her headlong from an antique shop in Kensington and within a month installed her in his house with a new wedding ring and too little to do.
Malcolm, telling me now and again about those days, had said, ‘She understood figures, you see. And she could beat me at cards. And she looked so damned demure. So young. Not bossy at all, like she was later. Her people thought me an upstart, did you know? Their ancestors traced back to Charles II, mine traced back to a Victorian knife-grinder. But her people weren’t rich, you know. More breeding than boodle. It was an impulse, marrying Joyce. There you are, I admit it. Turned out she didn’t like sex much, more’s the pity. Some women are like that. No hormones. So I went on seeing Alicia. Well, I would, wouldn’t I? Joyce and I got on all right, pretty polite to each other and so on, until she found out about Alicia. Then we had fireworks, all hell let loose for months on end, do you remember? Don’t suppose you remember, you were only four or five.’
‘Five and six, actually.’
‘Really? Joyce liked being mistress of the house, you know. She learned about power. Grew up, I suppose. She took up bridge seriously, and started voluntary work. She hated leaving all that, didn’t much mind leaving me. She said Alicia had robbed her of her self-esteem and ruined her position in the local community. She’s never forgiven her, has she?’
Joyce had returned to the small Surrey town where her parents had lived and later died, their social mantle falling neatly onto her able shoulders. She bullied the local people into good works, made continual bridge-tournament forays, earned herself a measure of celebrity, and no, had never forgiven Alicia.
In the bar at Sandown she was dressed, as always, with a type of businesslike luxury: mink jacket over grey tailored suit, neat white silk shirt, long strings of pearls, high-heeled shoes, green felt hat, polished calf handbag. ‘A well-dressed, well-bred, brassy blonde’ Alicia had once called her, which was both accurate and unfair, as was Joyce’s tart tit-for-tat opinion of Alicia as ‘White meat of chicken aboard the gravy train’.
Joyce drank most of the rest of her vodka and said, ‘Do you really think one of the family is capable of murder?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But who?
‘That’s the question.’
‘It isn’t possible,’ she insisted.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Take them one by one. Tell me why it’s impossible in each individual case, according to each person’s character. Start at the beginning, with Vivien.’
‘No, Ian,’ she protested.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Help me. Help Malcolm. Help us all.’
She gave me a long worried look, oblivious to the movement and noise going on all around us. The next race was already in progress but without noticeable thinning of the crowd who were watching it on closed circuit television above our heads.
‘Vivien,’ I prompted.
‘Impossible, just impossible. She’s practically dim-witted. If she was ever going to murder anybody, it would have been long ago and it would have been Alicia. Alicia ruined Vivien’s marriage, just like mine. Vivien’s a sniffler, full of self-pity. And why would she do it? For those three wimpish offspring?’
‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘They all need money. She hasn’t enough herself to bail them out of their holes.’
‘It’s still impossible.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘How about Donald? And Helen?’
Donald had been ten, more than half Joyce’s age, when she had married Malcolm, and he had been in and out of Quantum, as had Lucy and Thomas, whenever Malcolm had exercised his joint-custody rights and had them to stay. Joyce’s lack of interest in children had definitely extended to her step-children, whom she’d found noisy, bad tempered and foul mannered, though Malcolm disagreed.
‘Donald’s a pompous, snobbish ass,’ she said now, ‘and as insecure as hell under the bluster. Malcolm thinks Helen’s as brainless as she’s pretty, but I’d say you don’t need brains to murder, rather the opposite. I’d think Helen would fight like a fury to save her cubs from physical harm. But Moira wasn’t threatening her cubs, not directly. I’d think Helen could be only a hot-blood killer, but so could most people, driven hard enough to defend themselves or their young.’
I wondered if she knew about the school-fees crisis: if they hadn’t directly told her, she had got them remarkably right.
‘Lucy?’ I said.
‘Lucy thinks everyone is inferior to herself, especially if they have more money.’
Poor Lucy, I thought. ‘And Edwin?’ I said.
Joyce frowned. ‘Edwin …’
‘Edwin isn’t impossible?’ I asked.
‘He never gets time off from running errands. Not enough time anyway for waiting around to catch Moira alone in her glass house.’
‘But in character?’
‘I don’t know enough about him,’ Joyce confessed. ‘He yearns for money, that’s for sure, and he’s earned it, picking up after Lucy all these years. I don’t know his impatience level.”
‘All right then,’ I said, ‘what about Thomas?’
‘Thomas!’ Joyce’s face looked almost sad. ‘He wasn’t as insufferable as Donald and Lucy when he was little. I liked him best of the three. But that damned Vivien screwed him up properly, didn’t she? God knows why he married Berenice. She’ll badger him into the grave before he inherits, and then where will she be?’
Joyce finished the vodka and said. ‘I don’t like doing this, Ian, and I’m stopping right here.’
Thomas, I thought. She was
n’t sure about Thomas, and she doesn’t want to say so. The analysis had all of a sudden come to an unwelcome, perhaps unexpected, abyss.
‘Another drink?’ I suggested.
‘Yes. Gervase is drinking, did you know?’
‘He always drinks.’
‘Ursula telephoned me to ask for advice.’
‘Did she really?’ I was surprised. ‘Why didn’t she ask Alicia?’
‘Ursula detests her mother-in-law,’ Joyce said. ‘We have that in common. Ursula and I have become quite good friends.’
Amazing, I thought, and stood up to fetch the refills.
Joyce’s eyes suddenly widened in disbelief, looking beyond me.
‘I knew you were lying,’ she said bitterly. ‘There’s Malcolm.’
Seven
I turned, not knowing whether to be frightened or merely irritated.
Malcolm hadn’t seen Joyce, and he wasn’t looking for her or for me but solely for a drink. I made my way to the bar to meet him there and took him by the arm.
‘Why aren’t you bloody upstairs?’ I said.
‘I was outstaying my welcome, old chap. It was getting very awkward. They had an ambassador to entertain. I’ve been up there three bloody hours. Why didn’t you come and fetch me?’
‘Joyce,’ I said grimly, ‘is sitting over there in the corner. I am buying her a drink, and she saw you come in.’
‘Joyce!’ He turned round and spotted her as she looked balefully in our direction. ‘Damn it.’
‘Prowling around outside we also have Donald and Helen, Lucy and Edwin, Ferdinand and Debs, and Serena.’
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Hunting in pairs.’
‘You may joke,’ I said, ‘and you may be right.’
‘I couldn’t stay up there. They were waiting for me to leave, too polite to tell me to go.’
He looked apprehensive, as well he might.
‘Will Joyce tell them all that I’m here?’
‘We’ll see if we can stop it,’ I said. ‘What do you want to drink? Scotch?’
He nodded and I squeezed through the throng by the bar and eventually got served. He helped me carry the glasses and bottles back to the table, and sat where I’d been sitting, facing Joyce. I fetched another chair from nearby and joined my ever non-loving parents.
‘Before you start shouting at each other,’ I said, ‘can we just take two things for granted? Joyce wants Malcolm to stop scattering largesse, Malcolm wants to go on living. Both ends are more likely to be achieved if we discover who murderered Moira in case it is Moira’s murderer who wishes also to kill Malcolm.’ I paused. ‘OK for logic?’
They both looked at me with the sort of surprise parents reserve for unexpected utterances from their young.
Malcolm said, ‘Surely it’s axiomatic that it’s Moira’s murderer who’s trying to kill me?’
I shook my head. ‘Ever heard of copycat crime?’
‘My God,’ he said blankly. ‘One possible murderer in the family is tragedy. Two would be …”
‘Statistically improbable,’ Joyce said.
Malcolm and I looked at her with respect.
‘She’s right,’ Malcolm said, sounding relieved, as if one killer were somehow more manageable than two.
‘OK,’ I agreed, wondering what the statistical probabilities really were, wondering whether Ferdinand could work them out, ‘OK, the police failed to find Moira’s murderer although they tried very hard and are presumably still trying …’
‘Trying to link me with an assassin,’ muttered Malcolm darkly.
‘We might, as a family,’ I said, ‘have been able to overcome Moira’s murder by making ourselves believe in the motiveless unknown outside-intruder theory …’
‘Of course we believe it,’ Joyce said faintly.
‘Not now, we can’t. Two unknown outside-intruder motiveless murders - because Malcolm was meant to die - are so statistically improbable as to be out of sight. The police haven’t found Moira’s murderer, but we have now got to try to do it ourselves. It’s no longer safe not to, which is why we engaged Norman West.’ I looked directly at Joyce. ‘Stop fussing over what Malcolm is spending and start thinking of ways to save his life, if only so that he can make more money, which he can do, but only if he’s alive.’
‘Ian …’ She was shocked.
‘You roused the whole family this morning on the telephone, telling them where to find me, and now seven of them that we know of are here, and others may be who’ve kept out of sight. Much though we hate the idea, Moira’s murderer may be here.’
‘No, no,’ Joyce exclaimed.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Malcolm’s primary defence against being murdered is staying out of reach of lethal instruments, which means people not knowing where to find him. Well, you, my darling mother, brought the whole pack here to the races, so now you’d better help Malcolm to leave before they catch him.’
‘I didn’t know he’d be here,’ she protested.
‘No, but he is. It’s time to be practical.’
No one pointed out that if she had known he’d be there, she would have sent everyone with even more zeal.
‘Do you have any ideas?’ Malcolm asked me hopefully.
‘Yes, I do. But we have to have Joyce’s help, plus her promise of silence.’
My mother was looking less than her normal commanding self and gave assurances almost meekly.
‘This is not a private bar,’ I said, ‘and if any of the family have bought Club passes, they may turn up in here at any moment, so we’d best lose no time. I’m going to leave you both here for a few minutes, but I’ll be back. Stay in this corner. Whatever happens, stay right here. If the family find you, still stay here. OK?’
They both nodded, and I left them sitting and looking warily at each other in the first tete-a-tete they’d shared for many a long year.
I went in search of the overall catering director whom I knew quite well because one of his daughters rode against me regularly in amateur races, and found him by sending urgent messages via the manager of the Members’ bar.
‘Ian,’ he said ten slow minutes later, coming to the bar from the back, where the bottles were, ‘what’s the trouble?’
He was a company director, head of a catering division, a capable man in his fifties, sprung from suburbia, upwardly mobile from merit, grown worldly wise.
I said the trouble was private, and he led me away from the crowds, through the back of the bar and into a small area of comparative quiet, out of sight of the customers.
My father, I told him, badly needed an immediate inconspicuous exit from the racecourse and wanted to know if a case of vintage Bollinger would ease his passage.
‘Not skipping his bookie, I hope?’ the caterer said laconically.
‘No, he wants to elope with my mother, his ex-wife, from under the eyes of his family.’
The caterer, amused, agreed that Bollinger might be nice. He also laughed at my plan, told me to put it into operation, he would see it went well, and to look after his Rosemary whenever she raced.
I went back through the bar to collect Malcolm and to ask Joyce to fetch her car and to drive it to where the caterers parked their vans, giving her directions. The two of them were still sitting alone at the table, not exactly gazing into each other’s eyes with rapture but at least not drawn apart in frost. They both seemed relieved at my reappearance, though, and Joyce picked up her handbag with alacrity to go to fetch her car.
‘If you see any of the others,’ I said, ‘just say you’re going home.’
‘I wasn’t born yesterday, darling,’ she replied with reviving sarcasm. ‘Run along and play games, and let me do my part.’
The game was the same one I’d thought of earlier in the changing-room, modified only by starting from a different point. It was just possible that the wrong eyes had spotted Malcolm in his brief passage outside from the exit door of the Directors’ rooms to the entrance door of the bar, but even if so, I thought we coul
d fool them.
In the quiet private space at the rear of the bar, the catering director was watching the large chef remove his white coat and tall hat.
‘A case of vintage Bollinger for the caterer, a handout for the chef,’ I murmured in Malcolm’s ear. ‘Get Joyce to drop you at a railway station, and I’ll see you in the Savoy. Don’t move until I get there.’
Malcolm, looking slightly dazed, put on the chef’s coat and hat and pulled out his wallet. The chef looked delighted with the result and went back to slicing his turkeys in temporary shirtsleeves. Malcolm and the catering director left through the bar’s rear door and set off together through the racecourse buildings to go outside to the area where the caterers’ vans were parked. I waited quite a long anxious time in the bar, but eventually the catering director returned, carrying the white disguise, which he restored to its owner.
‘Your father got off safely,’ he assured me. ‘He didn’t see anyone he knew. What was it all about? Not really an elopement, was it?’
‘He wanted to avoid being assassinated by his disapproving children.’
The caterer smiled, of course not believing it. I asked where he would like the fizz sent and he took out a business card, writing his private address on the back.
‘Your father lunched with the Directors, didn’t he?’ he said. ‘I thought I saw him up there.’ His voice implied that doing favours for people who lunched with the Directors was doubly vouched for, like backing up a cheque with a credit card, and I did my best to reinforce further his perception of virtue.
‘He’s just bought a half share in an Arc de Triomphe runner,’ I said. ‘We’re going over for the race.’
‘Lucky you,’ he said, giving me his card. He frowned suddenly, trying to remember. ‘Didn’t Rosemary tell me something about your father’s present wife being pointlessly murdered some weeks ago? His late wife, I suppose I should say. Dreadful for him, dreadful.’
