by Dick Francis
I still wondered, as I’d wondered in New York, whether it was because I, Ian, had gone back to live at Quantum with Malcolm that she’d come to that great violent protest. I had too often had what she’d yearned for. The bomb had been meant as much for me as for Malcolm, I thought.
‘Do you remember that morning when she found we weren’t dead?’ I asked. ‘She practically fainted. Everyone supposed it was from relief, but I’ll bet it wasn’t. She’d tried three times to kill you and it must have seemed intolerable to her that you were still alive.’
‘She must have been… well… insane.’
Obsessed… insane. Sometimes there wasn’t much difference.
Malcolm had given up champagne and gone back to scotch. The constant bubbles, I saw, had been a sort of gesture, two fingers held up defiantly in the face of danger, a gallant crutch against fear. He poured a new drink of the old stuff and stood by the window looking over Green Park.
‘You knew it was Serena… who would come.’
‘If anyone did.’
‘How did you know?’
‘I saw everyone, as you know. I saw what’s wrong with their lives. Saw their desperations. Donald and Helen are desperate for money, but they were coping the best way they could. Bravely, really, pawning her jewellery. They thought you might help them with guaranteeing a loan, if they could find you. That’s a long way from wanting to kill you.’
Malcolm nodded and drank, and watched life proceeding outside.
‘Lucy,’ I said, ‘may have lost her inspiration but not her marbles. Edwin is petulant but not a planner, not dynamic. Thomas…’ I paused. ‘Thomas was absolutely desperate, but for peace in his house, not for the money itself. Berenice has made him deeply ineffective. He’s got a long way to go, to climb back. He seemed to me incapable almost of tying his shoelaces, let alone making a time-bomb, even if he did invent the wired-up clocks.’
‘Go on,’ Malcolm said.
‘Berenice is obsessed with herself and her desires, but her grudge is against Thomas. Money would make her quieter, but it’s not money she really wants, it’s a son. Killing Moira and you wouldn’t achieve that.’
‘And Gervase?’
‘He’s destroying himself. It takes all his energies. He hasn’t enough left to go around killing people for money. He’s lost his nerve. He drinks. You have to be courageous and sober to mess with explosives. Ursula’s desperation takes her to churches and to lunches with Joyce.’
He grunted in his throat, not quite a chuckle.
Joyce had been thanked by us on the telephone on the Saturday night when we’d come back exhausted. She’d been devastated to the point of silence about what had happened and had put the phone down in tears. We phoned her again in the morning, i got Serena first,’ she said sorrowfully. ‘She must have gone out and bought all the stuff… I can’t bear it. That dear little girl, so sweet when she was little, even though I hated her mother. So awful.’
‘Go on, then,’ Malcolm said. ‘You keep stopping.’
‘It couldn’t have been Alicia or Vivien, they’re not strong enough to carry you. Alicia’s new boyfriend would be, but why should he think Alicia would be better off with you dead? And I couldn’t imagine any of them constructing a bomb.’
‘And Ferdinand?’
I really couldn’t see it, could you? He has no particular worries. He’s good at his job. He’s easy-going most of the time. Not him. Not Debs. That’s the lot.’
‘So did you come to Serena just by elimination?’ He turned from the window, searching my face.
‘No,’ I said slowly, i thought of them all together, all their troubles and heart-aches. To begin with, when Moira died, I thought, ike everyone else did, that she was killed to stop her taking half your noney. I thought the attacks on you were for money, too. It was the obvious thing. And then, when I’d seen them all, when I understood all the turmoils going on under apparently normal exteriors, I began to wonder whether the money really mattered at all… And when I was in New York, I was thinking of them all again but taking the money out… and with Serena… everything fitted.’
He stirred restlessly and went to sit down.
It wouldn’t have convinced the police,’ he said.
‘Nor you either,’ I agreed. ‘You had to see for yourself.’ We fell silent, thinking what in fact he had seen, his daughter come to blast out the kitchen rather than search it for a notepad.
‘But didn’t you have any proof?’ he said eventually, i mean, any real reason to think it was her? Something you could put your finger on.’
‘Not really. Nothing that would stand up in court. Except that I think it was Serena who got Norman West to find you in Cambridge, not Alicia, as West himself thought.’
He stared. ‘Why do you think that?’
‘Alicia said she hadn’t done it. Both West and I thought she was lying, but I think now she was telling the truth. Do you remember the tape from my telephone answering machine? Do you remember Serena’s voice? “Mummy wants to know where Daddy is. I told her you wouldn’t know, but she insisted I ask.” That’s what she said. Alicia told me positively that she herself hadn’t wanted to know where you were. If Alicia’s telling the truth, it was Serena who wanted to know, and she wanted to know because she’d lost us after failing to run you over. Lost us because of us scooting up to London in the Rolls.’
‘My God,’ he said. ‘What happened to the tape? I suppose it got lost in the rubble.’
‘No, it’s in a box in the garage at Quantum. A few things were saved. Several of your gold-and-silver brushes are there too.’
He waved the thought away, although he was pleased enough, i suppose Serena did sound like Alicia on the telephone. I sometimes thought it was Alicia, when she phoned. Breathless and girlish. You know. Norman West just got it wrong.’
‘She did call herself Mrs Pembroke,’ I pointed out. ‘Just to confuse matters. Or maybe she said Ms and he didn’t hear dearly.’
‘It doesn’t much matter.’ He was quiet for a while. ‘Although it was terrible yesterday, it was the best thing, really. We’ll grieve and get over this. She couldn’t have borne to be locked up, could she, not with all that energy… not in drab clothes.’
On that Sunday morning also, we began telephoning to the family to tell them what had happened. I expected to find that Joyce had already told them, but she hadn’t. She’d talked to them all the day before, they said, but that was all.
We left a lot of stunned silences behind us. A lot of unstoppable tears.
Malcolm told Alicia first, and asked if she’d like him to come to see her, to comfort her. When she could speak, she said no. She said Serena didn’t kill Moira, Ian did. Everything was Ian’s fault. Malcolm put the receiver down slowly, rubbed his hand over his face, and told me what she’d said.
It’s very hard,’ he said, excusing her, ‘to face that you’ve given birth to a murderer.’
‘She helped to make her a murderer,’ I said.
I spoke to my four brothers and to Lucy. Malcolm told Vivien last.
They all asked where we were: Joyce had told them we were in Australia. In London, we said, but didn’t add where. Malcolm said he couldn’t face having them all descend on him before he was ready. By the end, I was dropping with fatigue and Malcolm had finished off half a bottle. Long before bedtime, we were asleep.
We went back to Quantum on Monday, as we’d promised the police, and found Mr Smith poking around like old times.
All physical signs of Serena had mercifully been taken away, and all that remained were the torn flaps of black plastic that hadn’t been near her.
Mr Smith shook hands with us dustily and after a few commiserating platitudes came out with his true opinions.
‘Anyone who carries a fully-wired explosive device from place to place is raving mad. You don’t connect the battery until the device is where you want it to go off. If you’re me, you don’t insert the detonator, either. You keep them separate.’
I don’t
suppose she meant to drop it,’ I said.
‘Mind you, she was also unlucky,’ Mr Smith said judiciously, it is possible, but I myself wouldn’t risk it, to drop ANFO with a detonator in it and have it not explode. But maybe dropping it caused the clock wires to touch.’
‘Have you found the clock?’ I asked.
‘Patience,’ he said, and went back to looking.
A policeman fending away a few sensation seekers told us that Superintendent Yale had been detained, and couldn’t meet us there: please would we go to the police station. We went, and found him in his office.
He shook hands. He offered sympathy.
He asked if we knew why Serena had gone to Quantum with a second bomb, and we told him. Asked if we knew why she should have killed Moira and tried to kill Malcolm. We told him my theories. He listened broodingly.
‘There will be an inquest,’ he said. ‘Mr Ian can formally identify the remains. You won’t need to see them… her… again, though.
The coroner’s verdict will be death by misadventure, I’ve no doubt. You may be needed to give an account of what happened. You’ll be informed of all that in due course.’ He paused. ‘Yesterday, we went to Miss Pembroke’s flat and conducted a search. We found a few items of interest. I am going to show you some objects and I’d be glad if you’d say whether you can identify them or not.’
He reached into a carton very like the one Serena had been carrying, which stood on his desk. He brought out a pile of twenty or thirty exercise books with spiral bindings and blue covers and after that a tin large enough to contain a pound of sweets, with a picture on top.
‘The Old Curiosity Shop,’ Malcolm said sadly.
‘No possibility of doubt,’ Yale nodded. ‘The title’s printed across the bottom of the picture.’
‘Are there any detonators in it?’ I asked.
‘No, just cotton wool. Mr Smith wonders if she used more than one detonator for each bomb, just to make sure. He says amateurs are mad enough to try anything.’
I picked up one of the notebooks and opened it.
‘Have you seen those before, sirs?’ Yale asked.
‘No,’ I said, and Malcolm shook his head.
In Serena’s looping handwriting, I read:
‘Daddy and I had such fun in the garden this morning. He was teaching the dogs to fetch sticks and I was throwing the sticks. We picked a lot of beautiful daffodils and when we went indoors I put them all in vases in all the rooms. I cooked some lamb chops for lunch and made mint sauce and peas and roast potatoes and gravy and for pudding we had ice-cream and peaches. Daddy is going to buy me some white boots with zips and silver tassels. He calls me his princess, isn’t that lovely? In the afternoon, we went down to the stream and picked some watercress for tea. Daddy took his socks off and rolled up his trousers and the boys no the boys weren’t there I won’t have them in my stories it was Daddy who picked the watercress and we washed it and ate it with brown bread. This evening I will sit on his lap and he will stroke my hair and call me his little princess, his little darling, and it will be lovely.’
I flicked through the pages. The whole book was full. Speechlessly I handed it to Malcolm, open where I’d read.
‘All the notebooks are like that,’ Yale said. ‘We’ve had them all read right through. She’s been writing them for years, I would say.’
‘But you don’t mean… they’re recent?’ I said.
‘Some of them are, certainly. I’ve seen several sets of books like these in my career. Compulsive writing, I believe it’s called. These of your sister’s are wholesome and innocent by comparison. You can’t imagine the pornography and brutality I’ve read. They make you despair.’
Malcolm, plainly moved, flicking over pages, said, ‘She says I bought her a pretty red dress… a white sweater with blue flowers on it… a bright yellow leotard - I hardly know what a leotard is. Poor girl. Poor girl.’
‘She bought them herself,’ I said. ‘Three or four times a week.’
Yale tilted the stack of notebooks up, brought out the bottom one and handed it to me. ‘This is the latest. It changes at the end. You may find it interesting.’
I turned to the last entries in the book and with sorrow read:
‘Daddy is going away from me and I don’t want him any more. I think perhaps I will kill him. It isn’t so difficult. I’ve done it before.’
There was a space on the page after that, and then, lower down:
‘Ian is back with Daddy.’
Another space, and then,
‘IAN IS AT QUANTUM WITH DADDY. I CANT BEAR IT.’
After yet another space, she had written my name again in larger-still capitals ‘IAN’ and surrounded it with a circle of little lines radiating outwards: an explosion with my name in the centre.
That was the end. The rest of the notebook was empty.
Malcolm read the page over my arm and sighed deeply. ‘Can I have them?’ he said to Yale. ‘You don’t need them, do you? There won’t be a trial.’
Yale hesitated but said he saw no reason to retain them. He pushed the pile of books towards Malcolm and put the sweet tin on top.
‘And the lighthouse and clock,’ I said. ‘Could we have those?’
He produced the Lego box from a cupboard, wrote a list of what we were taking on an official-looking receipt and got Malcolm to sign it.
‘All very upsetting, Mr Pembroke,’ he said, again shaking hands, ‘but we can mark our case closed.’
We took the sad trophies back to the Ritz, and that afternoon Malcolm wrote and posted cheques that would solve every financial problem in the Pembrokes’ repertoire.
‘What about the witches?’ he said, if Helen and that dreadful Edwin and Berenice and Ursula and Debs are all having their own share, what about those other three?’
‘Up to you,’ I said. ‘They’re your wives.’
‘Ex-wives.’ He shrugged and wrote cheques for them also. ‘Easy come, easy go,’ he said. ‘Bloody Alicia doesn’t deserve it.’
‘Engines work better with a little oil,’ I said.
‘Greasing their palms, you mean.’ He still didn’t believe in it. Still felt he was corrupting them by giving them wealth. Still thinking that he could stay sane and reasonably sensible when he had millions, but nobody else could.
He wrote a final cheque and gave it to me. I felt awkward taking it, which he found interesting.
‘You should have had double,’ he said.
I shook my head, reeling at noughts. ‘You’ve post-dated it,’ I said.
‘Of course I have. I’ve post-dated all of them. I don’t have that much in readies lying around in the bank. Have to sell a few shares. The family can have the promise now and the cash in a month.’
He licked the envelopes. Not a cruel man, I thought.
On Tuesday, because I wished it, we went to see Robin.
‘He won’t remember Serena,’ Malcolm said.
‘No, I don’t expect so.’
We went in the car I’d hired the day before for going to Quantum, and on the way stopped again to buy toys and chocolate and a packet of balloons.
I had taken with us the Lego lighthouse and the Mickey Mouse clock, thinking they might interest Robin, over which Malcolm shook his head.
‘He won’t be able to make them work, you know.’
‘He might remember them. You never know. They used to be his and Peter’s, after all. Serena gave them the clock and made them the lighthouse.’
Robin’s room was very cold because of the open french windows. Malcolm tentatively went across and closed them, and Robin at once flung them open. Malcolm patted Robin’s shoulder and moved away from the area, and Robin looked at him searchingly, in puzzlement, and at me the same way, as he sometimes did: trying, it seemed, to remember, and never quite getting there.
We gave him the new toys which he looked at and put down again, and after a while I opened the Lego box and brought out the old ones.
He looked at the
m for only a moment and then went on a long wander round and round the room, several times. Then he came to me, pointed at the packet of balloons and made a puffing noise.
‘Good Lord,’ Malcolm said.
I opened the packet and blew up several balloons, tying knots in the necks, as I always did. Robin went on making puffing noises until I’d blown up every balloon in the packet. His face looked agitated. He puffed harder to make me go faster.
When they were all scattered round the room, red, yellow, blue, green and white, bobbing about in stray air currents, shiny and festive, he went round bursting them with furious vigour, sticking his forefinger straight into some, pinching others, squashing the last one against the wall with the palm of his hand, letting out the anger he couldn’t express.
Most times, after this ritual, he was released and at peace, and would retreat into a corner and sit staring into space or huddled up, rocking.
This time, however, he went over to the table, picked up the lighthouse, pulled it roughly apart into four or five pieces and threw them forcefully out of the wide-open window. Then he picked up the clock and with violence yanked the wires off, including the Mickey Mouse hands.
Malcolm was aghast. Docile Robin’s rage shouted out of his mute body. His strength was a revelation.
He took the clock in his hand and walked round the room smashing it against the wall at each step. Step, smash, step, smash, step, smash.
‘Stop him,’ Malcolm said in distress.
‘No… he’s talking,’ I said.
‘He’s not talking.’
‘He’s telling us…’
Robin reached the window and threw the mangled clock far and high into the garden. Then he started shouting, roaring without words, his voice rough from disuse and hoarse with the change taking place from boy into man. The sound seemed to excite him until his body was reverberating, pouring out sound, the dam of silence swept away. ‘Aaah… aaah… aaah…’ and then real words, ‘No… No… No… Serena… No… Serena… No… Serena… No…’ He shouted to the skies, to the fates, to the wicked unfairness of the fog in his brain. Shouted in fury and frenzy. ‘Serena… No… Serena… No…’ and on and on until it became mindless, without meaning, just words.
