by Dick Francis
‘Yes,’ he nodded, ‘always my system.’ A faraway unfocused look appeared in his eyes, then he suddenly sat bolt upright.
‘I know where they are! I saw the tin not so very long ago, when I was looking for something else. I didn’t pay much attention. It didn’t even register what was in it, but I’m pretty sure now that that’s what it was. It’s a sort of sweet tin, not very big, with a picture on top.’
‘Where was it, and how long ago?’
‘Surely,’ he said, troubled, ‘they’d be duds by this time?’
‘Quite likely not.’
‘They’re in the office.’ He shrugged self-excusingly. ‘You know I never tidy that place up. I’d never find anything ever again. I’m always having to stop people tidying it.’
‘Like Moira?’
‘She could hardly bear to keep her hands off.’
‘Where in the office?’ I remembered the jumble in his desk drawer when I’d fetched his passport. The whole place was similar.
‘On top of some of the books in the breakfront bookcase. Bottom row, right over on the right-hand side, more or less out of sight when the door’s closed. On top of the Dickens.’ His face suddenly split intoa huge grin, i remember now, by God. I put it there because the picture on the tin’s lid was The Old Curiosity Shop.’
I rubbed my hand over my face, trying not to laugh. Superintendent Yale was going to love it.
‘They’re safe enough there,’ Malcolm said reasonably, ‘behind glass. I mean, no one can pick them up accidentally, can they? That’s where they are.’
I thought it highly likely that that’s where they weren’t, but I didn’t bother to say so. ‘The glass in the breakfront is broken,’ I said.
He was sorry about that. It had been his mother’s, he said, like all the books.
‘When did you see the tin there?’ I asked.
‘Haven’t a clue. Not all that long ago, I wouldn’t have thought, but time goes so quickly.’
‘Since Moira died?’
He wrinkled his forehead. ‘No, probably not. Then, before that, I was away from the house for a week or ten days when I couldn’t stand being in the same place with her and she obdurately wouldn’t budge. Before that, I was looking for something in a book. Not in Dickens, a shelf or two higher. Can’t remember what book, though I suppose I might if I went back and stood in front of them and looked at the titles. Altogether, over three months ago, I should say.’
I reflected a bit and drank my coffee. ‘I suppose the bookcase must have been moved now and then for redecorating. The books taken out…’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Malcolm interrupted with amusement. ‘It weighs more than a ton. The books stay inside it. Redecorating goes on around it, and not at all if I can help it. Moira tried to make me take everything out so she could paint the whole office dark green. I stuck my toes in. She had the rest of the house. That room is mine.’
I nodded lazily. It was pleasant in the sunshine. A few people were sunbathing, a child was swimming, a waiter in a white jacket came along with someone else’s breakfast. All a long way away from the ruins of Quantum.
From that quiet Sunday morning and on until Wednesday, Malcolm and I led the same remote existence, being driven round Los Angeles and Hollywood and Beverly Hills in a stretch-limousine Malcolm seemed to have hired by the yard, neck-twisting like tourists, goingout to Santa Anita racetrack in the afternoons, dining in restaurants like Le Chardonnay.
I gradually told him what was happening in the family, never pressing, never heated, never too much at one time, stopping at once if he started showing impatience.
‘Donald and Helen should send their children to state schools,’ he said moderately.
‘Maybe they should. But you sent Donald to Marlborough, and you went there yourself. Donald wants the best for his boys. He’s suffering to give them what you gave him effortlessly.’
‘He’s a snob to choose Eton.’
‘Maybe, but the Marlborough fees aren’t much less.’
‘What if it was Donald and Helen who’ve been trying to kill me?’
‘If they had plenty of money they wouldn’t be tempted.’
‘You’ve said that before, or something like it.’
‘Nothing has changed.’
Malcolm looked out of the long car’s window as we were driven up through the hills of Bel Air on the way to the racetrack.
‘Do you see those houses perched on the cliffs, hanging out over space? People must be mad to live like that, on the edge.’
I smiled. ‘You do,’ I said.
He liked Santa Anita racetrack immediately and so did I; it would have been difficult not to. Royal palms near the entrances stretched a hundred feet upward, all bare trunks except for the crowning tufts, green fronds against the blue sky. The buildings were towered and rurreted, sea-green in colour, with metal tracery of stylised palm leaves along the balconies and golden shutters over rear-facing windows. It looked more like a chateau than a racecourse, at first sight.
Ramsey Osborn had given Malcolm fistfuls of instructions and introductions and, as always, Malcolm was welcomed as a kindred spirit upstairs in the Club. He was at home from the first minute, belonging to the scene as if he’d been born there. I envied him his ease and didn’t know how to acquire it. Maybe time would do it. Maybe millions. Maybe a sense of achievement.
While he talked easily to almost strangers (soon to be cronies) about the mixing of European and American bloodlines in thoroughbreds, I thought of the phone call I’d made at dawn on Monday morning to Superintendent Yale. Because of the eight-hour timedifference, it was already afternoon with him, and I thought it unlikely I would reach him at first try. He was there, however, and came on the line with unstifled annoyance.
‘It’s a week since you telephoned.’
‘Yes, sorry.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Around,’ I said. His voice sounded as clear to me as if he were in the next room, and presumably mine to him, as he didn’t at all guess I wasn’t in England, i found my father,’ I said.
‘Oh. Good.’
I told him where Malcolm had stored the detonators. ‘On top of The Old Curiosity Shop, as appropriate.’
There was a shattered silence, i don’t believe it,’ he said.
‘The books are all old and leatherbound classics standing in full editions. Poets, philosophers, novelists, all bought years ago by my grandmother. We were all allowed to borrow a book occasionally to read, but we had to put it back. My father had us well trained.’
‘Are you saying that anyone who borrowed a book from that bookcase could have seen the detonators?’
‘Yes, I suppose so, if they’ve been there for twenty years.’
‘Did you know they were there?’
‘No. I didn’t read those sort of books much. Spent my time riding.’
Lucy, I thought, had in her teens plunged into poets as a fish into its native sea, but twenty years ago she had been twenty-two and writing her own immortality. None of the rest of us had been scholars. Some of grandmother’s books had never been opened.
‘It is incredible that when someone thought of making a bomb, the detonators were to hand,’ Yale complained.
‘Other way round, wouldn’t you think?’ I said. ‘The availability of the detonators suggested the bomb.’
‘The pool of common knowledge in your family is infuriating,’ he said. ‘No one can be proved to have special access to explosives. No one has a reliable alibi… except Mrs Ferdinand… Everyone can make a timing device and nearly all of you have a motive.’
Irritating,’ I agreed.
‘That’s the wrong word,’ he said sourly. ‘Where’s your father?’
‘Safe.’
‘You can’t stay in hiding for ever.’
‘Don’t expect to see us for a week or two. What chance is there of your solving the case?’ Enquiries were proceeding, he said with starch. If I came across any further information, I
would please give it to him.
Indeed, I said, I would.
‘When I was younger,’ he said to my surprise, ‘I used to think I had a nose for a villain, that I could always tell. But since then, I’ve met embezzlers I would have trusted my savings to, and murderers I’d have let marry my daughter. Murderers can look like harmless ordinary people.’ He paused. ‘Does your family know who killed Moira Pembroke?’
I don’t think so.’
‘Please enlarge,’ he said.
‘One or two may suspect they know, but they’re not telling. I went to see everyone. No one was even guessing. No one accusing. They don’t want to know, don’t want to face it, don’t want the misery.’
‘And you?’
‘I don’t want the misery either, but I also don’t want my father killed, or myself.’
‘Do you think you’re in danger?’
‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘In loco Moira.’
‘As chief beneficiary?’
‘Something like that. Only I’m not chief, I’m equal. My father made a new will saying so. I’ve told the family but they don’t believe it.’
‘Produce the will. Show it to them.’
‘Good idea,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
‘And you,’ he paused, ‘do you know, yourself?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Guess, then.’
‘Guessing is one thing, proof is another.’
I might remind you it’s your duty …’
‘It’s not my duty,’ I interrupted without heat, ‘to go off half-cocked. My duty to my family is to get it right or do nothing.’
I said goodbye to him rather firmly and concluded, from his tone as much as his words, that the police had no more information than I had, and perhaps less: that they hadn’t managed (if they’d tried) to find out where the grey plastic clock had come from or who had bought it, which was their only lead as far as I could see and a pretty hopeless proposition. It had been a cheap mass-production clock, probably on sale in droves.
Malcolm said on one of our car journeys, after I’d been telling him about Berenice, ‘Vivien, you know, had this thing about sons.’
‘But she had a boy first. She had two.’
‘Yes, but before Donald was born, she said she wouldn’t look at the baby if it was a girl. I couldn’t understand it. I’d have liked a girl. Vivien’s self-esteem utterly depended on having a boy. She was obsessed with it. You’d have thought she’d come from some dreadful tribe where it really mattered.’
It did matter,’ I said. ‘And it matters to Berenice. All obsessions matter because of their results.’
‘Vivien never loved Lucy, you know,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘She shoved her away from her. I always thought that was why Lucy got fat and retreated into poetic fantasies.’
‘Berenice shoves off her daughters onto her mother as much as she can.’
‘Do you think Berenice murdered Moira?’ he said doubtfully.
I think she thinks that having more money would make her happier, which it probably would. If you were going to think of any… er… distribution, I’d give it to the wives as well as the husbands. Separately, I mean. So they had independence.’
‘Why?’ he said.
‘Gervase might value Ursula more if she didn’t need him financially.’
‘Ursula’s a mouse.’
‘She’s desperate.’
‘They’re all desperate,’ he said with irritation, it’s all their own faults. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings.’
I dare say,’ I said.
‘The bell captain at the hotel gave me a tip for the fourth race.’
Back to horses.
Another day, another journey.
Malcolm said, ‘What did Serena say, when you saw her?’
‘She said you could stuff your money, or words to that effect.’
Malcolm laughed.
‘She also said,’ I went on, ‘that Alicia told her you’d only tried to get custody of her that time so as to be cruel to Alicia.’
‘Alicia’s a real bitch.’
‘She’s got a lover, did you know?’ I said.
He was thunderstruck. ‘Who is he?’
‘Someone else’s husband, I should think. That’s what she likes, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t be so bloody accurate.’
Further down the road we were talking about the time-switch clocks, which had been an unwelcome piece of news to him also.
‘Thomas was best at making them, wasn’t he?’ Malcolm said. ‘He could do them in a jiffy. They were his idea originally, I think. Serena brought one over for Robin and Peter which Thomas had made for her years ago.’
I nodded. ‘A Mickey Mouse clock. It’s still there in the playroom.’
‘Serena made them a lighthouse of Lego to go with it, I remember.’ He sighed deeply. ‘I miss Coochie still, you know. The crash happened not long after that.’ He shook his head to rid it of sadness. ‘What race shall we choose for the Coochie Memorial Trophy? What do you think?’
On another day, I asked why Ferdinand didn’t mind being illegitimate when Gervase did, to the brink of breakdown.
‘I don’t know,’ Malcolm said. ‘Gervase always thinks people are sneering and laughing, even now. Someone rubbed his nose in it when he was young, you know. Told him he was rubbish, a mistake, should have been aborted. Boys can be bloody cruel. Gervase got aggressive to compensate, I suppose. Nothing ever worried Ferdinand very much. He’s like me in more than looks.’
‘Only two wives so far,’ I said incautiously.
‘Why don’t you get married?’ he asked.
I was flippant. ‘Haven’t met the one and only. Don’t want five.’
‘Don’t you trust yourself?’ he said.
Christ, I thought, that was sharp, that was penetrating. That was unfair. It was because of him that I didn’t trust myself: because in inconstancy, I felt I was very much his son.
His imprint, for better or worse, was on us all.
Eighteen
On Wednesday, the Beverly Wilshire came alive as Ramsey had prophesied and Ramsey himself blew in with gusto and plans. We would go to parties. We would go round the horse barns. We would go to a Hollywood Gala Ball.
The Breeders’ Cup organisers opened their reception room where everyone concerned with the races could have breakfast and cocktails (together if they liked) and talk about horses, could arrange cars and rickets and talk about horses, could meet the people they’d met at Epsom and Longchamp and talk about horses. Well-mannered people in good suits and silk dresses, owners whose enthusiasm prompted and funded the sport. Big bucks, big business, big fun.
Malcolm adored it. So did I. Life in high gear. Early on Friday, we went out to the racecourse to see Blue Clancy in his barn and watch him breeze round the track in his last warm-up before the big one. His English trainer was with him, and his English lad. There was heady excitement, a lot of anxiety. The orderly bustle of stable life, the smells, the swear words, the earthy humour, the pride, the affection, the jealousies, the injustices, the dead disappointments, all the same the world over.
Blue Clancy looked fine, worked well, threw Malcolm and Ramsey into back-slapping ecstasies. ‘Wait until, tomorrow,’ the trainer said cautiously, watching them. ‘We’re taking on the best in the world, don’t forget. The hot money is for a California-bred horse.’
‘What’s hot money?’ Malcolm demanded.
‘The bets made by people in the know. People with inside information.’
Who cared, Malcolm said. He couldn’t remember ever having more fun in his life: and I thought his euphoria was at least partly due to his three close approaches to losing it.
Along with a thousand others, we went to the ball, though in the stretch-limo, not a converted pumpkin, and in the vast sound stage which had lately held a split-open aeroplane for filming cabin dramas, Malcolm danced with several ladies he’d known well for two
days. He spent his time laughing. He was infectious. Everyone around him lit up like nightlights, banishing gloom.
We slept, we ate breakfast, we went to the races. The smog that all week had covered the mountains everyone swore were there on the far side of the track, relented and evaporated and disclosed a sunlit rocky backdrop worthy of the occasion. Tables with tablecloths had appeared overnight throughout the Club stands, and overworked black-coated waiters sweated under huge trays of food, threading through ever-moving racegoers, never dropping the lot.
There were seven Breeders’ Cup races; various distances, variously aged horses. The first five each offered a total purse (for first, second, third and so on) of one million dollars. Blue Clancy’s race, the one-and-a-half-mile Turf, had a purse of two million, and the climactic event, the Breeders’ Cup Classic, promised three. They weren’t racing for peanuts. The owner of the winner of Blue Clancy’s race would be personally richer by six hundred and twenty-nine thousand dollars, enough to keep him in Bollinger for weeks.
We cheered home the first five winners. We went down to the saddling stalls and saw Blue Clancy prepared. We went up to the stands and bit our nails.
Five of the seven races were run on the dirt track, two on grass, of which this was the second; and most of the European horses were running on grass, the green stuff of home. Blue Clancy was taking on the Epsom Derby winner, the Arc de Triomphe winner and the winner of the Italian Derby. On paper, he looked to have an outside chance of coming fourth. In Malcolm’s and Ramsey’s eyes, he was a shoo-in. (Malcolm had learned the local jargon.)
Blue Clancy broke cleanly from the gate away on the far side of the course and his English jockey held him handily in sixth place all down the far side. Ramsey and Malcolm were looking through binoculars and muttering encouragements. Blue Clancy, not hearing them, swung into the long left-hand bottom bend in no better position and was still lying sixth when the field crossed the dirt track as they turned for home. Malcolm’s muttering grew louder. ‘Come on, you bugger. Come on.’
There was no clear leader. Three horses raced together in front, followed by a pair together, then Blue Clancy alone. Too much to do, I thought: and the agile colt immediately proved me wrong. His jockey swung him wide of the others to allow him a clear run and gave him unmistakable signals that now was the time that mattered, now, this half-minute, if never again.
