by Dick Francis
The push itself had been a relatively small matter, but as Maynard was basically murderous, it had to be taken as a substitute killing, a relief explosion, a jet of steam to stop the top blowing off the volcano.
The film, I thought uneasily, would keep that volcano in check; and I supposed I could put up with the jets of steam if I thought of them as safety valves reducing his boiling pressure. I didn’t want him uncontrollably erupting. I’d rather fall down more steps; but I would also be more careful where I walked.
The princess was out on the balcony when I reached her box, huddled into her furs, and alone.
I went out there to join her, and found her gazing blind-eyed over the racecourse, her thoughts obviously unwelcome.
‘Princess,’ I said.
She turned her head, her eyes focusing on my face.
‘Don’t give up,’ I said.
‘No.’ She stretched her neck and her backbone as if to disclaim any thought of it. ‘Is Helikon all right?’ she asked.
‘Dusty said so.’
‘Good.’ She sighed. ‘Have you any idea what’s running next week? It’s all a blank in my mind.’
It was a fair blank in mine also. ‘Icefall goes on Thursday at Lingfield.’
‘How did Helikon fall?’ she asked, and I told her that it wasn’t her horse’s fault, he’d been brought down.
‘He was going well at the time,’ I said. ‘He’s growing up and getting easier to settle. I’ll school him next week one morning to get his confidence back.’
She showed a glimmer of pleasure in an otherwise un-pleasurable day. She didn’t ask directly after my state of health, because she never did: she considered the results of falls to lie within the domain of my personal privacy into which she wouldn’t intrude. It was an attitude stemming from her own habit of reticence and, far from minding it, I valued it. It was fussing I couldn’t stand.
We went inside for some tea, joining Danielle, Litsi and Beatrice, and presently Lord Vaughnley appeared on one of his more or less regular visits to the princess’s box.
His faint air of anxiety vanished when he saw me drinking there, and after a few minutes he managed to cut me off from the pack and steer me into a corner.
I thanked him for his packet of yesterday.
‘What? Oh yes, my dear chap, you’re welcome. But that’s not what I wanted to say to you, not at all. I’m afraid there’s been a bit of a leak … it’s all very awkward.’
‘What sort of leak?’ I asked, puzzled.
‘About the film you made of Maynard Allardeck.’
I felt my spine shiver. I desperately needed that film to remain secret.
‘I’m afraid,’ Lord Vaughnley said, ‘that Allardeck knows you sent a copy of it to the Honours people in Downing Street. He knows he will never again be considered for a knighthood, because of your sending it.’ He smiled half anxiously but couldn’t resist the journalistic summary: ‘Never Sir Maynard, never Lord Allardeck, thanks to Kit Fielding.’
‘How in hell’s teeth did he find out?’ I demanded.
‘I don’t know,’ Lord Vaughnley said uncomfortably. ‘Not from me, my dear fellow, I assure you. I’ve never told anyone. But sometimes there are whispers of these things. Someone in the civil service … don’t you know.’
I looked at him in dismay. ‘How long has he known?’ I said.
‘I think since sometime last week.’ He shook his head unhappily. ‘I heard about it this morning in a committee meeting of the charity of which Allardeck and I are both directors. He’s chairman, of course. The civil service charity, you remember.’
I remembered. It was through good works for the sick and needy dependents of civil servants that Maynard had tried hardest to climb to his knighthood.
‘No one in the charity has seen the film, have they?’ I asked urgently.
‘No, no, my dear fellow. They’ve simply heard it exists. One of them apparently asked Allardeck if he knew anything about it.’
Oh God, I thought; how leaks could trickle through cracks.
‘I thought you’d better know,’ Lord Vaughnley said. ‘And don’t forget I’ve as strong an interest in that film as you have. If it’s shown all over the place, we’ll have lost our lever.’
‘Maynard will have lost his saintly reputation.’
‘He might operate without it.’
‘The only copies,’ I said, ‘are the ones I gave to you and to the Honours people, and the three I have in the bank. Unless you or the Honours people show them … I can’t believe they will,’ I said explosively. ‘They were all so hush-hush.’
‘I thought I should warn you.’
‘I’m glad you did.’
It explained so much, I thought, about Maynard’s recent behaviour. Considering how he must be seething with fury, just pushing me down the steps showed amazing restraint.
But then … I did still have the film, and so far it hadn’t been shown to a wider audience, and Maynard really wouldn’t want it shown, however much he had lost through it already.
Lord Vaughnley apologised to the princess for monopolising her jockey, and asked if I was still interested in more information regarding Nanterre.
‘Yes, please,’ I said, and he nodded and said it was still flickering through computers, somewhere.
‘Trouble?’ Litsi asked at my elbow, when Lord Vaughnley had gone.
‘Allardeck trouble, not Nanterre.’ I smiled lop-sidedly. ‘The Fieldings have had Allardeck trouble for centuries. Nanterre’s much more pressing.’
We watched the last race, on my part without concentration, and in due course returned to the cars, Litsi and Danielle, deserting the Rolls, saying they were coming with me.
On the walk from the box to the car park, I stopped a few times to take the weight off my foot. No one made a remark, but when we arrived at my car, Danielle said positively, ‘I’m driving. You can tell me the way.’
‘You don’t need a left foot with automatic transmission,’ I pointed out.
‘I’m driving,’ she said fiercely. ‘I’ve driven your car before.’ She had, on a similar occasion.
I sat in the passenger seat without more demur, and asked her to stop at a chemist’s shop a short distance along the road.
‘What do you need?’ she said brusquely, pulling up. ‘I’ll get it.’
‘Some strapping, and mineral water.’
‘Aspirin?’
‘There’s some here in the glove compartment.’
She went with quick movements into the shop and returned with a paper bag which she dumped on my lap.
‘I’ll tell you the scenario,’ she said to Litsi with a sort of suppressed violence as she restarted the car and set off towards London. ‘He’ll strap his own ankle and sit with it surrounded by icepacks to reduce the swelling. He’ll have hoof-shaped bruises that’ll be black by tomorrow, and he’ll ache all over. He won’t want you to notice he can’t put that foot on the ground without pain shooting up his leg. If you ask him how he feels, he’ll say “with every nerve ending”. He doesn’t like sympathy. Injuries embarrass him and he’ll do his best to ignore them.’
Litsi said, when she paused, ‘You must know him very well.’
It silenced Danielle. She was driving with the same throttled anger, and took a while to relax.
I swallowed some aspirins with the mineral water and thought about what she’d said. And Litsi was right, I reflected: she did truly know me. She unfortunately sounded as if she wished she didn’t.
‘Kit, you never did tell me,’ Litsi said after a while, ‘why it annoyed Maynard Allardeck so much when the princess said her horses always jumped well at Sandown. Why on earth should that anger anyone?’
‘Modesty forbids me to tell you,’ I said, smiling.
‘Well, have a try.’
‘She was paying me a compliment which Maynard didn’t want to hear.’
‘Do you mean it’s because of your skill that her horses jump well?’
‘Experience,
’ I said. ‘Something like that.’
‘He’s obsessed,’ Litsi said.
He was dangerous, I thought: and there was such a thing as contract killing, by persons unknown, which I didn’t like the thought of very much. To remove the mind from scary concepts, I asked Danielle if she’d managed to tell Beatrice that Monday was her last evening stint.
Danielle, after a lengthy pause, said that no, she hadn’t.
‘I wish you would,’ I said, alarmed. ‘You said you would.’
‘I can’t tell her … What if Nanterre turns up and shoots you?’
‘He won’t,’ I said. ‘But if we don’t catch him …’ I paused. ‘The princess told me today that if Roland signs the arms contract to save us all, he will literally die of shame. He wouldn’t want to go on living. She’s extremely worried that he’ll give in … she loves him … she wants him alive. So we’ve got to stop Nanterre; and stop him soon.’
Danielle didn’t answer for two or three miles, and it was Litsi eventually who broke the silence.
‘I’ll tell Beatrice,’ he said firmly.
‘No,’ Danielle protested.
‘Last night,’ I said, ‘Nanterre killed another of the princess’s horses. The princess doesn’t want Roland to know … or Beatrice, who would tell him.’
They both exclaimed in distress.
‘No wonder she’s been so sad,’ Litsi said. ‘It wasn’t just Helikon falling.’
‘Which horse?’ Danielle asked.
‘Col,’ I said. ‘The one I rode at Ascot.’
‘That didn’t quite win?’ Litsi asked.
‘Yes,’ Danielle said. ‘Her Gold Cup horse.’ She swallowed. ‘If Litsi tells Beatrice Monday’s my last day, I won’t deny it.’
We spent another slightly claustrophobic evening in the house. Roland came down to dinner, and conversation was a trifle stilted owing to everyone having to remember what was not known and shouldn’t be said.
Litsi managed to tell Beatrice positively but naturally that the last time I would be fetching Danielle at night would be Monday, as Danielle would no longer be working in the evenings, a piece of news which surprised the princess greatly.
Beatrice took in the information satisfactorily, with her eyes sliding my way, and one could almost see the cogs clicking as she added the hour to the place.
I wondered if she understood the nature of what I hoped she was going to arrange. She seemed to have no doubts or compunction about laying an ambush which would remove me from her path; but, of course, she didn’t know about the attack on Litsi or about Col’s death, which we couldn’t tell her because either she would instantly apply breaking-point pressure to her brother by informing him, or she would suffer renewed pangs of remorse and not set up the ambush at all.
Beatrice was a real wild card, I thought, who could win us or lose us the game.
Nanterre again didn’t telephone; and there had been no one all day asking about a Bradbury reward.
The advertisements had been prominent in the racing papers for two days, and noticeable in the Towncrier, but either the message-bearer hadn’t seen them or hadn’t thought answering worth while.
Well, I thought in disappointment, going a little painfully to bed, it had seemed a good idea at the time, as Eve no doubt told Adam after the apple.
Dawson buzzed through on the intercom before seven on Sunday morning. Phone call, he said.
Not again, I thought: Christ, not again.
I picked up the receiver with the most fearful foreboding, trying hard not to shake.
‘Look here,’ a voice said, ‘this message from Danielle. I don’t want any trouble, but is this reward business straight up?’
SEVENTEEN
‘Yes,’ I said, dry-mouthed, ‘it is.’
‘How much then?’
I took a deep breath, hardly believing, my heart thumping.
‘Quite a lot,’ I said. ‘It depends how much you can tell me … I’d like to come and see you.’
‘Don’t know about that,’ he said grudgingly.
‘The reward would be bigger,’ I said. ‘And I’d bring it with me.’ Breathing was easier. My hands had stopped trembling.
‘I don’t want any trouble,’ he said.
‘There won’t be any. You tell me where you’ll meet me, and I’ll come.’
‘What’s your name?’ he demanded.
I hesitated fractionally. ‘Christmas,’ I said.
‘Well, Mr Christmas, I’m not meeting you for less than a hundred quid.’ He was belligerent, suspicious and cautious, all in one.
‘All right,’ I said slowly. ‘I agree.’
‘Up front, on the table,’ he said.
‘Yes, all right.’
‘And if I tell you what you want to hear, you’ll double it.’
‘If you tell me the truth, yes.’
‘Huh.’ he said sourly. ‘Right then … you’re in London, aren’t you? That’s a London number.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll meet you in Bradbury,’ he said. ‘In the town, not the racecourse. You get to Bradbury by twelve o’clock, I’ll meet you in the pub there … the King’s Head, half way along the High Street.’
‘I’ll be there,’ I said. ‘How will I know you?’
He thought, breathing heavily. ‘I’ll take the Sporting Life with your ad in it.’
‘And … er … what’s your name?’ I asked.
He had the answer to that question all ready. ‘John Smith,’ he said promptly. ‘I’ll see you, then, Mr Christmas. OK?’
‘OK,’ I said.
He disconnected and I lay back on the pillows feeling more apprehensive than delighted. The fish, I thought, hadn’t sounded securely on the hook. He’d nibbled at the bait, but was full of reservations. I just hoped to hell he’d turn up where and when he’d said, and that he’d be the right man if he did.
His accent had been country English, not broad, just the normal local speech of Berkshire which I heard every day in Lambourn. He hadn’t seemed over-bright or cunning, and the amount he’d asked for, I thought, revealed a good deal about his income and his needs.
Large reward … When I hadn’t objected to one hundred, he’d doubled it to two. But to him, two hundred equated large.
He was a gambler: Litsi had described him as having a sporting paper, a form book and binoculars. What was now certain was that he gambled small, a punter to whom a hundred was a substantial win. I supposed I should be glad he didn’t think of a hundred as a basic stake: a large reward to someone like that might have been a thousand.
Thankfully I set about the business of getting up, which on the mornings after a crunch was always slow and twingy. The icepacks from bedtime had long melted, but the puffball my ankle had swollen to on the previous afternoon had definitely contracted. I took the strapping off, inspected the blackening bruising, and wrapped it up again snugly; and I could still get my shoe on, which was lucky.
In trousers, shirt and sweater I went down by lift to the basement and nicked more ice cubes from the fridge, fastening them into plastic bags and wedging them down inside my sock. Dawson appeared in his dressing-gown to see what was going on in his kitchen and merely raised his eyebrows much as he had the evening before when I’d pinched every ice cube in the house.
‘Did I do right,’ he asked, watching, ‘putting that phone call through to you?’
‘You certainly did.’
‘He said it was to do with the advertisement: he said he was in a hurry as he was using a public telephone.’
‘Was he?’ I pushed the trouser leg down over the loaded sock, feeling the chill strike deep through the strapping.
‘Yes,’ Dawson said, ‘I could hear the pips. Don’t you give yourself frostbite, doing that?’
‘Never have, yet.’
Breakfast, he said a shade resignedly, would be ready in the morning room in half an hour, and I thanked him and spent the interval waking up Litsi, who said bleary-eyed that he was unaccustomed to
life before ten on Sunday mornings.
‘We’ve had a tug on the line,’ I explained, and told him about John Smith.
‘Are you sure it isn’t Nanterre setting a trap?’ Litsi said, waking up thoroughly. ‘Don’t forget, Nanterre could have seen that advertisement too. He could be reeling you in, not the other way round … I suppose you did think of that?’
‘Yes, I did. But I think John Smith is genuine. If he’d been a trap, he would’ve been different, more positive.’
He frowned. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘I’d like your company but Sammy has the day off because we’re all here, and if we both go …’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘But don’t go onto balconies. How’s your ankle? Or am I not supposed to ask?’
‘Half way to normal,’ I said. ‘Danielle exaggerates.’
‘Not so much.’ He rubbed a hand through his hair. ‘Have you enough cash for John Smith?’
‘Yes, in my house. I’ll go there on the way. I’ll be back here this afternoon, sometime.’
‘All being well,’ he said dryly.
I drove to Lambourn after a particularly thorough inspection of the car. It was still possible that John Smith was a trap, though on balance I didn’t believe it. Nanterre couldn’t have found an actor to convey the subtleties in John Smith’s attitudes, nor could he himself possibly have imitated the voice. John Smith might be someone trying to snatch the reward without any goods to deliver; he might be a fraud, I thought, but not a deadly danger.
My house felt cold and empty. I opened all the letters that had accumulated there since Monday, took the ones that mattered, and dumped the junk into the dustbin along with several unread newspapers. I leafed through the present Sunday’s papers and found two or three mentions, both as general news stories and as special paragraphs on the sports pages, about Col being shot. All the stories recalled Cascade and Cotopaxi, but raised no great questions of why, and said who was still a complete mystery. I hadn’t seen Beatrice reading any English newspaper since she’d arrived, and just hoped to hell she wouldn’t start that morning.
