by Dick Francis
Not surprisingly, they decided to take a look in the playroom. They picked their way cautiously across the ankle-twisting rubble and headed for the passage which was comparatively clear by this time. The playroom, when we reached it, was shadowy inside, with the windows boarded up. Light of sorts seeped in through the door, but it took a few minutes for eyes to acclimatise, during which Yale bumped into the bicycles, knocking them over. I helped him pick them up. He wanted to know whose they were, and I told him about Peter and Robin.
He made no especial comment but watched while I went over to the shelves and began peering into boxes. I hadn’t been in the room at all since the twins had gone, and their own playthings had overlaid those outgrown and abandoned by their elder brothers and sisters so that most of what I was looking at was unfamiliar and seemed to belong to strangers. It took several minutes to locate the box I thought I wanted, and to pick it off the shelves and put it on the table.
Someone, Coochie I dared say, had packed the trains away for good after Gervase and Ferdinand had left and I’d been busy with school and horses. At one time, the tracks had run permanently round half the room, but Peter and Robin had been television-watchers more than the rest of us, and hadn’t dragged them out again. I opened the box and found the old treasures undisturbed, looking more battered than I’d thought, with rust on the much-used wheels.
I lifted out a couple of engines and some coaches, then followed them with a tunnel, a signal box with green and red bulbs and a brown plastic railway station adorned with empty bulb-holders among the advertisement stickers. I suppose to any adult, his childhood’s rediscovered toys look smaller, deader, less appealing than he remembers. The trains were dusty and sad, relics ready for the skip outside, melancholic. The little lights had long gone out.
I took everything out of the box, but there were no clocks.
‘Sorry,’ I said.‘They could be in anything, really. If they’re here.’
Smith began looking into any box whose contents weren’t easily identifiable by the picture on top. Yale, with a no-hope expression, followed suit. I packed the trains back into oblivion with regret.
‘Well, just look here,’ Smith said suddenly.‘Gold mine.’
He had produced from a jumble of Lego constructions a bright new-looking clock with a Mickey Mouse face in unfaded techni-colour. Mickey’s hands in fat white gloves were the hands of the clock. To the minute hand was fixed a coil of white plastic-covered wire. A second white coil was stuck to the scarlet clock casing, its bared end jutting out over noon. When Smith held it all up, the white coils stretched out and down like curling streamers.
I looked at it blankly.
‘I’ve never seen that one before,’ I said.‘We didn’t make them decorative. Ours were …’ I sought for the word ‘… utilitarian.’
Smith picked away among the Lego.‘Can’t find a battery,’ he reported.‘Nor a torch bulb, for that matter.’ A pause.‘Wait a minute …’ He rattled around and, finally, triumphantly produced a red and white Lego tower with a bulb-holder lodged inside near the top.
‘A lighthouse, wouldn’t you say?’ he asked, standing it upright.‘Neat.’
‘Someone made this for your twin brothers,’ Yale said.‘Are you sure you never saw it?’
I shook my head.‘I didn’t live here then, only visited. The twinshad a short attention span, anyway. They tired of new toys pretty quickly. Always wanted to get on with the next thing.’
‘I’ll find out who made it,’ Yale said.‘Can you sort out a box to put it in? I’ll give you a receipt, of course.’
Smith found him an empty Lego box and into it they packed the bright co-star of an act that had brought half the house down. There was room in the box for the lighthouse, so they took that, too. Yale solemnly wrote a receipt on a page of his notebook and gave it to me, and with him carrying the box we went out into the daylight, blinking as our eyes adjusted after the gloom.
As we walked back in the general direction of the trestle table, Smith said,‘We’ve put all the clothes we’ve found on a table in the garage. I’m afraid they’re mostly torn and unwearable, but you might want to see. All the personal things we’ve salvaged are in a cardboard carton. Do you want to take those today, or wait until we’re finished?’
‘Look now, take later,’ I said.
Smith half smiled.‘They’re in that box under the table.’
I squatted down beside the brown cardboard carton and opened the top flaps. Inside there was quite a good collection of dusty bits and pieces, more than I would have imagined. I picked out one of Malcolm’s precious brushes and ran my finger over the gold and silver chased backing. The dust came off and the metal shone in the sunlight. He would be pleased, I thought.
‘We’ve found five of those,’ Smith observed.‘Two are badly dented, the others look all right.’
‘There were eight,’ I said.‘In his dressing-room.’
He shrugged.‘We might find more.’
I turned over a few things in the box. Mostly they were uninteresting, like a bottle of aspirins from the bathroom. At the bottom, I came across one or two things of my own - an empty spongebag and the tape recorder.
I lifted the recorder out, straightened up and put it on the table. Pressed the start button. Absence of results.
‘It was just a chance you might want it,’ Smith said philosophically, ‘It doesn’t work as it is, but you might want to get it mended.’
‘Probably cheaper to buy a new one,’ I said. I pressed the rewind and fast-forward buttons pointlessly, and then the eject button, which worked. The plastic lid staggered open, revealing a tape within. I had to think for a minute which tape it was and thenremembered it was only the one from my answering machine; nothing interesting. I shut the lid and put the recorder back in the box under the table.
‘If you find my camera, now that would be good news,’ I said, straightening again.
Yale had lost interest and was preparing to leave.
‘Was it yours?’ said Mr Smith, ‘It’s in the skip, I’m afraid. Badly smashed.’
‘Oh well…’
‘Were you insured?’
I shook my head.‘Never thought of it.’
Smith made sympathetic gestures and went back to the rubble. The superintendent said I should telephone him the following morning without fail. He ran his thumb and finger down his moustache and asked me if I now knew who had bombed the house.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t. Do you?’
He wouldn’t say he didn’t, but he didn’t. He picked up the Lego box and marched off with it, and I went to look at the clothes in the garage.
Nothing was worth saving, I thought. All highly depressing. My jodhpur boots with the toes flattened, Malcolm’s vicuna coats with triangular tears. I left it all as it lay and started out on a quick hike round the garden to make sure all was well with the gold, and came upon Arthur Bellbrook digging potatoes within six feet of it. My heart jumped a bit. His was undisturbed.
We exchanged good mornings and remarks about the weather. He asked what he should do with the potatoes and I told him to take them home. He nodded his thanks. He complained that the pick-up trucks for the rubbish skips were ruining the lawn. He said souvenir hunters had stripped Mrs Pembroke’s fancy greenhouse of every single geranium, including the cuttings, but not to worry, without glass in the windows they would have died in the first frost. It had been a mild autumn, but frost would come soon.
He looked along the length of the kitchen garden, his back towards the end wall. He would dig everything over, he said, ready for winter.
I left him bending again to his task, not sure whether he was a guardian of the gold or a threat to it. Malcolm had a nerve, I thought, hiding his stockpile in that place and seeing Arthur work close to it day after day. Malcolm had more nerve than was good for him.
I drove to the pub in Cookham, where they were getting used to my hours, took a bath, put on trousers, shirt and jersey and, accompanied by No
rman West’s notes, went down to the bar for a drink before lunch.
I read:
Mr Thomas Pembroke (39) lives with his wife Berenice at 6 Arden Haciendas, Sonning, Nr. Reading, in the strip of new townhouses where old Arden House used to be. Two daughters (9 and 7) go to comprehensive school.
Mr T. used to work as quantity surveyor for Reading firm of biscuit makers, Shutleworth Digby Ltd. He got sacked for wrong estimates several weeks ago. I was told unofficially at the firm that he’d cost them thousands by ordering six times the glace cherries needed for a run of‘dotted pinks’. (Had to laugh!) No laughing matter when tons of sliced almonds turned up after‘nut fluffs’ had been discontinued. Mr T. didn’t contest sacking, just left. Firm very relieved. Mr T. had been getting more and more useless, but had long service.
Mr T. didn’t tell his wife he’d lost his job, but went off as if to work every day. (Common reaction.) On Newmarket Sales Tuesday he was‘walking about’, same as the previous Friday. Pressed, he says he probably went to the public library in Reading, he did that most days; also sat around wherever there were seats, doing nothing. He read the job-offer pages in newspapers, but apparently did little to find work. No heart. (My opinion.)
Mr T. on brink of nervous breakdown (my opinion). I interviewed him in coffee shop. His hands trembled half the time, rattling cup against teeth, and he’s not yet forty. Alcohol? Don’t think so. Nerves shot to hell.
Mr T. drives old grey Austin 1100. Has slight dent in front wing. Mr T. says it’s been there weeks. Car dirty, could do with wash. Mr T. says he has no energy for things like that.
Mr T’s opinion of Mr Ian is very muddled (like the rest of him). Mr Ian is‘best of bunch, really’, but also Mr T. says Mr Ian is Mr Pembroke’s favourite and it isn’t fair. (!)
End of enquiry.
With a sigh, I put Thomas to the back and read about Berenice; no happy tale.
Mrs Berenice Pembroke (44 according to Mrs Joyce), wife of Mr Thomas, lives at 6 Arden Haciendas. No job. Looks after daughters, spends her days doing housework and reading trashy romances (according to Mrs Joyce again!).
Mrs B. very hard to interview. First visit, nothing. Second visit, a little, not much. She couldn’t produce alibi for either day.
I asked about children and school journeys. Mrs B. doesn’t drive them, they go by bus. They walk alone along pavement in residential side-road to and from bus stop, which is about one-third of mile away, on the main thoroughfare. Mrs B’s mother lives actually on the bus route. The girls get off the bus there most afternoons and go to their grandmother’s for tea.
Interviewed Mrs B’s mother. Not helpful. Agreed girls go there most days. Sometimes (if cold, wet or dark) she drives them home at about 7 pm. Other days, they finish journey by bus. I asked why they go there for tea so often and stay so late. Told to mind my own business. Younger girl said Granny makes better teas, Mummy gets cross. Told to shut up by older girl. Mrs B’s mother showed me out.
Mrs B. drives old white Morris Maxi, clean, no marks on it.
Mrs B. gave no opinion of Mr Ian when asked, but looked as if she could spit. Says Mr Pembroke is wicked. Mrs B. slammed her front door (she hadn’t asked me in!).
End of enquiry.
I put Berenice, too, back in the packet, and cheered myself up just a fraction with a slice of pork pie and a game of darts.
From the outside, Arden Haciendas were dreadful: tiny houses of dark brown-red brick set at odd angles to each other, with dark-framed windows at odd heights and dark front doors leading from walled front gardens one could cross in one stride. Nevertheless, Arden Haciendas, as Joyce had informed me a year earlier when Thomas had moved there, were socially the in thing, as they had won a prize for the architect.
God help architecture, I thought, ringing the bell of No 6.
hadn’t been to this house before: had associated Thomas and Berenice always with the rather ordinary bungalow they’d bought at the time of their wedding.
Berenice opened the door and tried to close it again when she sawme, but I pushed from my side and put my shoe over the threshold, and finally, with ill grace, she stepped back.
‘We don’t want to see you,’ she said.‘Dear Thomas isn’t well. You’ve no right to shove your way in here. I hate you.’
‘Well, hate or not, I want to talk to Thomas.’
She couldn’t say he wasn’t there, because I could see him. Inside, the Haciendas were open-plan with rooms at odd angles to each other, which explained the odd-angled exteriors. The front door led into an angled off-shoot of the main room, which had no ceiling where one would expect it, but soared to the rafters. Windows one couldn’t see out of let daylight in at random points in the walls. Horrible, I thought, but that was only, as Mr West would say, my opinion.
Thomas rose to his feet from one of the heavily-stuffed armchairs brought from the bungalow, old comfortable chairs looking incongruous in all the aggressive modernity. There was no carpet on the woodblock floor; Thomas’s shoes squeaked on it when he moved.
‘Come in, old chap,’ he said.
‘We don’t want him,’ Berenice objected.
Thomas was looking haggard and I was shocked. I hadn’t seen him, I realised, for quite a long time. All youth had left him, and I thought of him as he had been at eighteen or nineteen, laughing and good-humoured, coming for weekends and making Serena giggle.
Twenty years on, he looked middle-aged, the head balder than when I’d last taken his photograph, the ginger moustache less well tended, the desperation all-pervading. Norman West’s assessment of early breakdown seemed conservative. It looked to me as if it had already happened. Thomas was a lot further down the line to disintegration than Gervase.
Ferdinand, he confirmed in answer to my question, had told him about Malcolm’s will and about Malcolm’s wish that I should try to find out who wanted to kill him. Thomas couldn’t help, he said.
I reminded him of the day old Fred blew up the tree stump. Ferdinand had mentioned that too, he said. Thomas had been there. He remembered it clearly. He had carried Serena on his shoulders, and Fred had been blown flat.
‘And do you remember the time-switches we used to make, with wire on the clocks’ hands?’
He stared, his eyes gaunt. After a long pause, he said,‘Yes.’
‘Thomas, after Gervase and Ferdinand left Quantum, did you or they make any more of them?’
Berenice interrupted,‘Dear Thomas couldn’t make a time-switch to save his life, could you, darling?’ Her voice was pitying, sneering, unkind. Thomas sent her a haunted look but no protest.
‘Someone gave Robin and Peter a Mickey Mouse clock with white plastic-covered wires stuck on it,’ I said.‘Very bright and attractive.’
Thomas shook his head helplessly.
‘In the rubble at Quantum, they’ve found a clock hand stuck onto some white plastic-covered wire.’
‘Oh, my God,’ Thomas said miserably.
‘So what?’ Berenice demanded.‘Dear Thomas does over-act so.’
‘So,’ I said,‘someone who knew how to make these time-switches blew up Quantum.’
‘What of it?’ she said. ‘I can’t see Thomas doing it. Not enough nerve, have you, darling?’
Thomas said to me,‘Have a drink?’
Berenice looked disconcerted. Asking me to have a drink had been for Thomas an act of rebellion against her wishes. There hadn’t been many of them, I guessed. I accepted with thanks, although it was barely five-thirty and to my mind too early. I’d chosen the hour on purpose, hoping both that Thomas would have returned from his day’s wanderings and that the daughters would stop at their grandmother’s house on their way home from school.
Thomas squeaked across the floor to the kitchen, which was divided from the main room only by a waist-high counter, and began opening cupboards. He produced three tumblers which he put clumsily on the counter, and then sought in the fridge interminably for mixers. Berenice watched him with her face screwed into an expre
ssion of long-suffering impatience and made no move to help.
‘We have some gin somewhere,’ he said vaguely, having at last found the tonic, ‘I don’t know where Berenice puts things. She moves them about.’
‘Dear Thomas couldn’t find a book in a library.’
Thomas gave her a look of black enmity which she either didn’t see or chose to ignore. He opened another cupboard, and another, and in his wife’s continued unhelpful silence finally found a nearly full bottle of Gordon’s gin. He came round into the main room and poured from the bottle into three glasses, topping up inadequately from a single bottle of tonic.
He handed me a glass. I didn’t much care for gin, but it was no time to say so.
He held out the second glass to Berenice.
‘I don’t want any,’ she said.
Thomas’s hand was trembling. He made an awkward motion as if to raise the glass to his own lips, then put it down with a bang on the counter, and in an uncoordinated movement accidentally knocked the gin bottle over so that it fell to the floor, smashing into green shiny pieces, the liquid spreading in a pool.
Thomas bent down to pick up the bits. Berenice didn’t help.
She said,‘Thomas can’t get anything right, can you, darling?’ The words were no worse than others, but the acid sarcasm in her voice had gone beyond scathing to unbearable.
Thomas straightened with a face filled with passionate hatred, the worm turning at last, and by the neck he held the top part of the green bottle, the broken edges jagged as teeth.
He came up fast with his hand rising. Berenice, cushioned in complacency, wasn’t even looking at him and seemed not to begin to understand her danger.
Malcolm said I had fast reactions… I dropped my own drink, grasped Berenice by both arms and swung her violently round and out of the slicing track of the razor-sharp weapon. She was furiously indignant, protesting incredulously, sprawling across the floor where I’d almost thrown her, still unaware of what had been happening.
