Dead Cert

by Dick Francis

  THIRTEEN

  While I was dressing myself at tortoise pace the following morning the front door bell rang downstairs, and presently Joan came up to say that an Inspector Lodge would like to see me, please.

  ‘Tell him I’ll be down as soon as possible,’ I said, struggling to get my shirt on over the thick bracing bandage round my shoulders. I did up most of the buttons, but decided I didn’t need a tie.

  The strapping round my ribs felt tight and itched horribly, my head ached, large areas of flesh were black still and tender, I had slept badly, and I was altogether in a foul mood. The three aspirins I had swallowed in place of breakfast had not come up to scratch.

  I picked up my socks, tried to bend to put them on with my one useful arm, found how far away my feet had become, and flung them across the room in a temper. The day before, in the hospital, the nurse with nice teeth had helped me to dress. Today perverseness stopped me asking my father to come and do it for me.

  The sight of my smudgy, yellow, unshaven face in the looking-glass made matters no better. Henry’s ‘horrible monster from outer space’ was not so far off the mark. I longed to scratch the livid scar on my cheek, to relieve its irritation.

  I plugged in my electric razor and took off the worst, brushed my hair sketchily, thrust my bare feet into slippers, put one arm into my hacking jacket and swung it over the other shoulder, and shuffled gingerly downstairs.

  Lodge’s face when he saw me was a picture.

  ‘If you laugh at me I’ll knock your block off. Next week,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not laughing,’ said Lodge, his nostrils twitching madly as he tried to keep a straight face.

  ‘It’s not funny,’ I said emphatically.

  ‘No.’

  I scowled at him.

  My father said, glancing at me from behind his Sunday newspaper in the depths of an armchair by the fire, ‘You sound to me as if you need a stiff brandy.’

  ‘It’s only half past ten,’ I said crossly.

  ‘Emergencies can happen at any time of the day,’ said my father, standing up, ‘and this would appear to be a grave one.’ He opened the corner cupboard where Scilla kept a few bottles and glasses, poured out a third of a tumbler full of brandy, and splashed some soda into it. I complained that it was too strong, too early, and unnecessary.

  My father handed me the glass. ‘Drink it and shut up,’ he said.

  Furious, I took a large mouthful. It was strong and fiery, and bit into my throat. I rolled the second mouthful round my teeth so that the scarcely diluted spirit tingled on my gums, and when I swallowed I could feel it slide warmly down to my empty stomach.

  ‘Did you have any breakfast?’ asked my father.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  I took another, smaller gulp. The brandy worked fast. My bad temper began draining away, and in a minute or two I felt reasonably sane. Lodge and my father were looking at me intently as though I were a laboratory animal responding to an experiment.

  ‘Oh very well then,’ I admitted grudgingly, ‘I feel better.’ I took a cigarette from the silver box on the table and lit it, and noticed the sun was shining.

  ‘Good.’ My father sat down again.

  It appeared that he and Lodge had introduced themselves while they waited for me, and Lodge had told him, among other things, about my adventures in the horse-box outside Maidenhead, a detail I had omitted from my letters. This I considered to be treachery of the basest sort, and said so; and I told them how Kate and I had tracked down the horse-box, and that that particular line of enquiry was a dead end.

  I took my cigarette and glass across the room and sat on the window seat in the sun. Scilla was in the garden, cutting flowers. I waved to her.

  Lodge, dressed today not in uniform but in grey flannels, fine wool shirt and sports jacket, opened his brief case, which lay on the table, and pulled out some papers. He sat down beside the table and spead them out.

  He said, ‘Mr Gregory rang me up at the station on the morning after your fall at Bristol to tell me about it.’

  ‘Why on earth did he do that?’ I asked.

  ‘You asked him to,’ said Lodge. He hesitated, and went on, ‘I understand from your father that your memory is affected.’

  ‘Yes. Most bits of that day at Bristol have come back now, but I still can’t remember going out of the weighing-room to ride Palindrome, or the race or the fall, or anything.’ My last mental picture was of Sandy walking out into the rain. ‘Why did I ask Pete to tell you I fell?’

  ‘You asked him before the race. You apparently thought you were likely to fall. So, unofficially, I checked up on that crash of yours.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘You’ve accounted for all my free time lately, and today is really my day off. Why I bother with you I really don’t know!’ But I guessed that he was as addicted to detecting as an alcoholic to drink. He couldn’t help doing it.

  He went on, ‘I went down to Gregory’s stables and took a look at Palindrome. He had a distinct narrow wound across his front on those two pads of flesh…’

  ‘Chest,’ I murmured.

  ‘… Chest, then; and I’ll give you one guess at what cut him.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I said, guessing, but not believing it.

  ‘I checked up on the attendants at the fences,’ he said. ‘One of them was new and unknown to the others. He gave his name as Thomas Butler and an address which doesn’t exist, and he volunteered to stand at the farthest fence from the stands, where you fell. His offer was readily accepted because of the rain and the distance of the fence from the bookmakers. The same story as at Maidenhead. Except that this time Butler collected his earnings in the normal way. Then I got the clerk of the course to let me inspect the fence, and I found a groove on each post six feet, six inches from the ground.’

  There was a short silence.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ I said blankly. ‘It looks as though I was luckier than Bill.’

  ‘I wish you could remember something about it… anything. What made you suspect you would fall?’ asked Lodge.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘It was something that happened while you were in the parade ring waiting to mount.’ He leaned forward, his dark eyes fixed intently on my face, willing my sluggish memory to come to life. But I remembered nothing, and I still felt weary from head to foot. Concentration was altogether too much of an effort.

  I looked out into the peaceful spring garden. Scilla held an armful of forsythia, golden yellow against her blue dress.

  ‘I can’t remember,’ I said flatly. ‘Perhaps it’ll come back when my head stops aching.’

  Lodge sighed and sat back in his hard chair.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, a little bitterly, ‘that you do at least remember sending me a message from Brighton, asking me to do your investigating for you?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ I said. ‘How did you get on?’

  ‘Not very well. No one seems to know who actually owns the Marconicar taxi line. It was taken over just after the war by a business man named Clifford Tudor…’

  ‘What?’ I said in astonishment.

  ‘Clifford Tudor, respectable Brighton resident, British subject. Do you know him?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He owns several racehorses.’

  Lodge sorted out a paper from his briefcase. ‘Clifford Tudor, born Khroupista Thasos, in Trikkala, Greece. Naturalised nineteen thirty nine, when he was twenty-five. He started life as a cook, but owing to natural business ability, he acquired his own restaurant that same year. He sold it for a large profit after the war, went to Brighton, and bought for next to nothing an old taxi business that had wilted from wartime restrictions and lack of petrol. Four years ago he sold the taxis, again at a profit, and put his money into the Pavilion Plaza Hotel. He is unmarried.’

  I leaned my head back against the window and waited for these details to mean something significant, but all that happened was that my inability to think increased.

  Lodge went on. ‘The taxi line was b
ought from Tudor by nominees, and that’s where the fog begins. There have been so many transfers of ownership from company to company, mostly through nominees who can’t be traced, that no one can discover who is the actual present owner. All business matters are settled by a Mr Fielder, the manager. He says he consults with a person he calls “the Chairman” by telephone, but that “the Chairman” rings him up every morning, and never the other way round. He says the Chairman’s name is Claud Thiveridge, but he doesn’t know his address or telephone number.’

  ‘It sounds very fishy to me,’ said my father.

  ‘It is,’ said Lodge. ‘There is no Claud Thiveridge on the electoral register, or in any other official list, including the telephone accounts department, in the whole of Kent, Surrey or Sussex. The operators in the telephone exchange are sure the office doesn’t receive a long distance call regularly every morning, yet the morning call has been standard office routine for the last four years. As this means that the call must be a local one, it seems fairly certain that Claud Thiveridge is not the gentleman’s real name.’

  He rubbed the palm of his hand round the back of his neck and looked at me steadily. ‘You know a lot more than you’ve told me, amnesia or not,’ he said. ‘Spill the beans, there’s a good chap.’

  ‘You haven’t told me what the Brighton police think of the Marconicars,’ I said.

  Lodge hesitated. ‘Well, they were a little touchy on the subject, I would say. It seems they have had several complaints, but not much evidence that will stand up in court. What I have just told you is the result of their enquiries over the last few years.’

  ‘They would not seem,’ said my father dryly, ‘to have made spectacular progress. Come on Alan, tell us what’s going on.’

  Lodge turned his head towards him in surprise. My father smiled.

  ‘My son is Sherlock Holmes reincarnated, didn’t you know?’ he said. ‘After he went to England I had to employ a detective to do the work he used to do in connection with frauds and swindles. As one of my head clerks put it, Mr Alan has an unerring instinct for smelling out crooks.’

  ‘Mr Alan’s unerring instinct is no longer functioning,’ I said gloomily. Clouds were building up near the sun, and Scilla’s back disappeared through the macrocarpa hedge by the kitchen door.

  ‘Don’t be infuriating, Alan,’ said my father. ‘Elucidate.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’ I stubbed out my cigarette, began to scratch my cheek, and dragged my fingers away from the scar with a strong effort of will. It went on itching.

  ‘There’s a lot I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but the general gist appears to be this. The Marconicars have been in the protection racket for the last four years, intimidating small concerns like cafés and free house pubs. About a year ago, owing to the strongmindedness of one particular publican, mine host of The Blue Duck, business in the protection line began to get unexpectedly rough for the protectors. He set alsatians on them, in fact.’ I told my fascinated father and an aghast Lodge what Kate and I had learned in The Blue Duck’s kitchen, carefully watched by the yellow eyed Prince.

  ‘Ex-Regimental Sergeant-Major Thomkins made such serious inroads into the illicit profits of Marconicars,’ I continued, ‘that as a racket it was more or less defunct. The legitimate side hasn’t been doing too well during the winter either, according to the typists who work in the office. There are too many taxis in Brighton for the number of fares at this time of year, I should think. Anyway, it seems to me that the Marconicar boss—the Chairman, your mysterious Claud Thiveridge—set about mending his fortunes by branching out into another form of crime. He bought, I think, the shaky bookmaking business on the floor above the Marconicars, in the same building.’

  I could almost smell the cabbage in the Olde Oake Café as I remembered it. ‘An earnest lady told me the bookmakers had been taken over by a new firm about six months ago, but that its name was still the same. L. C. Perth, written in neon. She was very wrought up about them sticking such a garish sign on an architectural gem, and she and her old buildings society, whose name I forget, had tried to reason with the new owners to take down what they had just put up. Only they couldn’t find out who the new owner was. It’s too much of a coincidence to have two businesses, both shady, one above the other, both with invisible and untraceable owners. They must be owned by the same person.’

  ‘It doesn’t follow, and I don’t see the point,’ said my father.

  ‘You will in a minute,’ I said. ‘Bill died because he wouldn’t stop his horse winning a race. I know his death wasn’t necessarily intended, but force was used against him. He was told not to win by a husky-voiced man on the telephone. Henry, Bill’s elder son he’s eight—’ I explained to Lodge, ‘has a habit of listening on the extension upstairs, and he heard every word. Two days before Bill died, Henry says, the voice offered him five hundred pounds to stop his horse winning, and when Bill laughed at this, the voice told him he wouldn’t win because his horse would fall.’

  I paused, but neither Lodge nor my father said anything. Swallowing the last of the brandy, I went on. ‘There is a jockey called Joe Nantwich who during the last six months, ever since L. C. Perth changed hands, has regularly accepted a hundred pounds, sometimes more, to stop a horse winning. Joe gets his instructions by telephone from a husky-voiced man he has never met.’

  Lodge stirred on his hard, self-chosen chair.

  I went on. ‘I, as you know, was set upon by the Marconicar drivers, and a few days later the man with the husky voice rang me up and told me to take heed of the warning I had been given in the horse-box. One doesn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to see that the crooked racing and the Marconicar protection racket were being run by the same man.’ I stopped.

  ‘Finish it off, then,’ said my father impatiently.

  ‘The only person who would offer a jockey a large sum to lose a race is a crooked bookmaker. If he knows a well fancied horse is not going to win, he can accept any amount of money on that horse without risk.’

  ‘Enlarge,’ said Lodge.

  ‘Normally bookmakers try to balance their books so that whichever horse wins they come out on the winning side,’ I said. ‘If too many people want to back one horse, they accept the bets, but they back the horse themselves with another bookmaker; then if that horse wins, they collect their winnings from the second bookmaker, and pay it out to their customers. It’s a universal system known as “laying off.” Now suppose you were a crooked bookmaker and Joe Nantwich is to ride a fancied horse. You tip Joe the wink to lose. Then however much is betted with you on that horse, you do no laying off, because you know you won’t have to pay out.’

  ‘I would have thought that a hundred pounds would have been more than it was worth,’ said Lodge, ‘since bookmakers normally make a profit anyway.’

  ‘Your friend wasn’t satisfied with the legitimate gains from the taxis,’ my father pointed out.

  I sighed, and shifted my stiff shoulders against the frame of the window.

  ‘There’s a bit more to it, of course,’ I said. ‘If a bookmaker knows he hasn’t got to pay out on a certain horse, he can offer better odds on it. Not enough to be suspicious, but just enough to attract a lot of extra custom. A point better than anyone else would go to—say eleven to four, when the next best offer was five to two. The money would roll in, don’t you think?’

  I stood up and went towards the door, saying, ‘I’ll show you something.’

  The stairs seemed steeper than usual. I went up to my room and fetched the racing form book and the little bunch of bookmakers’ tickets, and shuffled back to the drawing-room. I laid the tickets out on the table in front of Lodge, and my father came over to have a look.

  ‘These,’ I explained, ‘are some tickets Bill kept for his children to play with. Three of them, as you see, were issued by L. C. Perth, and all the others are from different firms, no two alike. Bill was a methodical man. On the backs of all the tickets he wrote the date, the details of his bet, and the nam
e of the horse he’d put his money on. He used to search around in Tattersall’s for the best odds and bet in cash, instead of betting on credit with Tote Investors or one of the bookmakers on the rails—those,’ I added for Lodge’s benefit, as I could see the question forming on his lips, ‘are bookmakers who stand along the railing between Tattersall’s and the Club enclosures, writing down bets made by Club members and other people known to them. They send out weekly accounts, win or lose. Bill didn’t bet in large amounts, and he thought credit betting wasn’t exciting enough.’

  Lodge turned over the three Perth tickets.

  Bill’s loopy writing was clear and unmistakable. I picked up the first ticket, and read aloud, ‘Peripatetic. November 7th. Ten pounds staked at eleven to ten.” So he stood to win eleven pounds for his money.’ I opened the detailed form book and turned to November 7.

  ‘Peripatetic,’ I said, ‘lost the two mile hurdle at Sandown that day by four lengths. He was ridden by Joe Nantwich. The starting price was eleven to ten on—that is, you have to stake eleven pounds to win ten—and had earlier been as low as eleven to eight on. L. C. Perth must have done a roaring trade at eleven to ten against.’

  I picked up the second card and read, ‘Sackbut. October 10th. Five pounds staked at six to one.’ I opened the form book for that day. ‘Sackbut was unplaced at Newbury and Joe Nantwich rode it. The best price generally offered was five to one, and the starting price was seven to two.’

  I put the Sackbut ticket back on the table, and read the third card where it lay. ‘Malabar. December 2nd. Eight pounds staked at fifteen to eight.’ I laid the form book beside it, opened at December 2nd. ‘Malabar finished fourth at Birmingham. Joe Nantwich rode him. The starting price was six to four.’

  Lodge and my father silently checked the book with the ticket.

  ‘I looked up all the other cards as well,’ I said. ‘Of course, as Bill still had the tickets, all the horses lost; but on only one of them did he get better odds than you’d expect. Joe didn’t ride it, and I don’t think it’s significant, because it was an outsider at a hundred to six.’