For Kicks

by Dick Francis

  He swung the chair. I dodged it all right but in doing so got within range of Humber, whose stick landed heavily on top of my shoulder, an inch from my ear. I stumbled and fell, and rolled: and stood up just in time to avoid the chair as Adams crashed it down. One of the legs broke off as it hit the floor, and Adams bent down and picked it up. A solid, straight, square – edged chair leg with a nasty sharp point where it had broken from the seat.

  Adams smiled more, and kicked the remains of the chair into a corner.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘we’ll have some sport.’

  If you could call it sport, I suppose they had it.

  Certainly after a short space of time they were still relatively unscathed, while I had added some more bruises to my collection, together with a fast bleeding cut on the forehead from the sharp end of Adams’ chair leg. But the crash helmet hampered their style considerably, and I discovered a useful talent for dodging. I also kicked.

  Humber, being a slow mover, stayed at his post guarding the window and slashed at me whenever I came within his reach. As the office was not large this happened too often. I tried from the beginning either to catch hold of one of the sticks, or to pick up the broken chair, or to find something to throw, but all that happened was that my hands fared badly, and Adams guessed my intentions regarding the chair and made sure I couldn’t get hold of it. As for throwing things the only suitable objects in that bare office were on Humber’s desk, behind Humber.

  Because of the cold night on the hillside I was wearing two jerseys under my jacket, and they did act as some sort of cushion: but Adams particularly hit very hard, and I literally shuddered whenever he managed to connect. I had had some idea of crashing out through the window, glass and all, but they gave me no chance to get there, and there was a limit to the time I could spend trying.

  In desperation I stopped dodging and flung myself at Humber. Ignoring Adams, who promptly scored two fearful direct hits, I grasped my ex-employer by the lapels, and with one foot on the desk for leverage, swung him round and threw him across the narrow room. He landed with a crash against the filing cabinets.

  There on the desk was the green glass paper weight. The size of a cricket ball. It slid smoothly into my hand, and in one unbroken movement I picked it up, pivoted on my toes, and flung it straight at Humber where he sprawled off-balance barely ten feet away.

  It took him centrally between the eyes. A sweet shot. It knocked him unconscious. He fell without a sound.

  I was across the room before he hit the floor, my hand stretching out for the green glass ball which was a better weapon to me than any stick or broken chair. But Adams understood too quickly. His arm went up.

  I made the mistake of thinking that one more blow would make no real difference and didn’t draw back from trying to reach the paper weight even when I knew Adams’ chair leg was on its way down. But this time, because I had my head down, the crash helmet didn’t save me. Adams hit me below the rim of the helmet, behind the ear.

  Dizzily twisting, I fell against the wall and ended up lying with my shoulders propped against it and one leg doubled underneath me. I tried to stand up, but there seemed to be no strength left in me anywhere. My head was floating. I couldn’t see very well. There was a noise inside my ears.

  Adams leaned over me, unsnapped the strap of my crash helmet, and pulled it off my head. That meant something, I thought groggily. I looked up. He was standing there smiling, swinging the chair leg. Enjoying himself.

  In the last possible second my brain cleared a little and I knew that if I didn’t do something about it, this blow was going to be the last. There was no time to dodge. I flung up my right arm to shield my undefended head, and the savagely descending piece of wood crashed into it.

  It felt like an explosion. My hand fell numb and useless by my side.

  What was left? Ten seconds. Perhaps less. I was furious. I particularly didn’t want Adams to have the pleasure of killing me. He was still smiling. Watching to see how I would take it, he slowly raised his arm for the coup de grace.

  No, I thought, no. There was nothing wrong with my legs. What on earth was I thinking of, lying there waiting to be blacked out when I still had two good legs? He was standing on my right. My left leg was bent under me and he took no special notice when I disentangled it and crossed it over in front of him. I lifted both my legs off the ground, one in front and one behind his ankles, then I kicked across with my right leg, locked my feet tight together and rolled my whole body over as suddenly and strongly as I could.

  Adams was taken completely by surprise. He overbalanced with wildly swinging arms and fell with a crash on his back. His own weight made the fall more effective from my point of view, because he was winded and slow to get up. I couldn’t throw any longer with my numb right hand. Staggering to my feet, I picked the green glass ball up in my left and smashed it against Adams’ head while he was still on his knees. It seemed to have no effect. He continued to get up. He was grunting.

  Desperately I swung my arm and hit him again, low down on the back of the head. And that time he did go down; and stayed down.

  I half fell beside him, dizzy and feeling sick, with pain waking up viciously all over my body and blood from the cut on my forehead dripping slowly on to the floor.

  I don’t know how long I stayed like that, gasping to get some breath back, trying to find the strength to get up and leave the place, but it can’t really have been very long. And it was the thought of Cass, in the end, which got me to my feet. By that stage I would have been a pushover for a toddler, let alone the wiry little head lad.

  Both of the men lay in heaps on the ground, not stirring. Adams was breathing very heavily; snoring, almost. Humber’s chest scarcely moved.

  I passed my left hand over my face and it came away covered with blood. There must be blood all over my face, I thought. I couldn’t go riding along the road covered in blood. I staggered into the washroom to rinse it off.

  There were some half melted ice cubes in the sink. Ice. I looked at it dizzily. Ice in the refrigerator. Ice clinking in the drinks. Ice in the sink. Good for stopping bleeding. I picked up a lump of it and looked in the mirror. A gory sight. I held the lump of ice on the cut and tried, in the classic phrase, to pull myself together. With little success.

  After a while I splashed some water into the sink and rinsed all the blood off my face. The cut was then revealed as being only a couple of inches long and not serious, though still obstinately oozing. I looked round vaguely for a towel.

  On the table by the medicine cupboard stood a glass jar with the stopper off and a teaspoon beside it. My glance flickered over it, looking for a towel, and then back, puzzled. I took three shaky steps across the room. There was something the jar should be telling me, I thought, but I wasn’t grasping things very clearly.

  A bottle of phenobarbitone in powder form, like the stuff I’d given Mickey every day for a fortnight. Only phenobarbitone, that was all. I sighed.

  Then it struck me that Mickey had had the last dose in the bottle. The bottle should be empty. Tipped out. Not full. Not a new bottle full to the bottom of the neck, with the pieces of wax from the seal still lying in crumbs on the table beside it. Someone had just opened a new bottle of soluble phenobarbitone and used a couple of spoonfuls.

  Of course. For Kandersteg.

  I found a towel and wiped my face. Then I went back into the office and knelt down beside Adams to get the door key out of his pocket. He had stopped snoring.

  I rolled him over.

  There isn’t a pretty way of saying it. He was dead.

  Small trickles of blood had seeped out of his ears, eyes, nose and mouth. I felt his head where I had hit him, and the dented bones moved under my fingers.

  Aghast and shaking, I searched in his pockets and found the key. Then I stood up and went slowly over to the desk to telephone to the police.

  The telephone had been knocked on to the floor, where it lay with the receiver off. I bent dow
n and picked it up clumsily left handed, and my head swam with dizziness. I wished I didn’t feel so ill. Straightening up with an effort I put the telephone back on the desk. Blood started trickling down past my eyebrow. I hadn’t the energy to wash it off again.

  Out in the yard one or two lights were on, including the one in Kandersteg’s box. His door was wide open and the horse himself, tied up by the head, was lashing out furiously in a series of kicks. He didn’t look in the least sedated.

  I stopped with my finger in the dial of the telephone, and felt myself go cold. My brain cleared with a click.

  Kandersteg was not sedated. They wouldn’t want his memory lulled. The opposite, in fact. Mickey had not been given any phenobarbitone until he was clearly deranged.

  I didn’t want to believe what my mind told me; that one or more teaspoonfuls of soluble phenobarbitone in a large gin and campari would be almost certainly fatal.

  Sharply I remembered the scene I had found in the office, the drinks, the anxiety on Humber’s face, the enjoyment on Adams’. It matched the enjoyment I had seen there when he thought he was killing me. He enjoyed killing. He had thought from what she had said that Elinor had guessed the purpose of the whistle, and he had wasted no time in getting rid of her.

  No wonder he had raised no objections to her leaving. She would drive back to college and die in her room miles away, a silly girl who had taken an overdose. No possible connection with Adams or Humber.

  And no wonder he had been so determined to kill me: not only because of what I knew about his horses, or because I had fooled him, but because I had seen Elinor drink her gin.

  It didn’t need too much imagination to picture the scene before I had arrived. Adams saying smoothly, ‘So you came to see if Roke had used the whistle?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And does your father know you’re here? Does he know about the whistle?’

  ‘Oh no, I only came on impulse. Of course he doesn’t know.’

  He must have thought her a fool, blundering in like that: but probably he was the sort of man who thought all women were fools anyway.

  ‘You’d like some ice in your drink? I’ll get some. No bother. Just next door. Here you are, my dear, a strong gin and phenobarbitone and a quick trip to heaven.’

  He had taken the same reckless risk of killing Stapleton, and it had worked. And who was to say that if I had been found in the next county over some precipice, smashed up in the ruins of a motor-bike, and Elinor died in her college, that he wouldn’t have got away with two more murders?

  If Elinor died.

  My finger was still in the telephone dial. I turned it three times, nine, nine, nine. There was no answer. I rattled the button, and tried again. Nothing. It was dead, the whole telephone was dead. Everything was dead, Mickey was dead, Stapleton was dead, Adams was dead, Elinor… stop it, stop it. I dragged my scattering wits together. If the telephone wouldn’t work, someone would have to go to Elinor’s college and prevent her dying.

  My first thought was that I couldn’t do it. But who else? If I were right, she needed a doctor urgently, and any time I wasted on bumbling about finding another telephone or another person to go in my stead was just diminishing her chances. I could reach her in less than twenty minutes. By telephoning in Posset I could hardly get help for her any quicker.

  It took me three shots to get the key in the keyhole. I couldn’t hold the key at all in my right hand, and the left one was shaking. I took a deep breath, unlocked the door, walked out, and shut it behind me.

  No one noticed me as I went out of the yard the way I had come and went back to the motor-bike. But it didn’t fire properly the first time I kicked the starter, and Cass came round the end of the row of boxes to investigate.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he called. Is that you, Dan? What are you doing back here?’ He began to come towards me.

  I stamped on the starter fiercely. The engine spluttered, coughed and roared. I squeezed the clutch and kicked the bike into gear.

  ‘Come back,’ yelled Cass. But I turned away from his hurrying figure, out of the gate and down the road to Posset, with gravel spurting under the tyres.

  The throttle was incorporated into the hand grip of the right hand handle bar. One merely twisted it towards one to accelerate and away to slow down. Twisting the hand grip was normally easy. It was not easy that evening because once I had managed to grip it hard enough to turn it the numbness disappeared from my arm with a vengeance. I damned nearly fell off before I was through the gate.

  It was ten miles north east to Durham. One and a half downhill to Posset, seven and a half across the moors on a fairly straight and unfrequented secondary road, one mile through the outskirts of the city. The last part, with turns and traffic and too much change of pace, would be the most difficult.

  Only the knowledge that Elinor would probably die if I came off kept me on the motor-bike at all, and altogether it was a ride I would not care to repeat. I didn’t know how many times I had been hit, but I didn’t think a carpet had much to tell me. I tried to ignore it and concentrate on the matter in hand.

  Elinor, if she had driven straight back to college, could not have been there long before she began to feel sleepy. As far as I could remember, never having taken much notice, barbiturates took anything up to an hour to work. But barbiturate dissolved in alcohol was a different matter. Quicker. Twenty minutes to half an hour, perhaps. I didn’t know. Twenty minutes from the time she left the yard was easily enough for her to drive back safely. Then what? She would go up to her room: feel tired: lie down: and go to sleep.

  During the time I had been fighting with Adams and Humber she had been on her way to Durham. I wasn’t sure how long I had wasted dithering about in the washroom in a daze, but she couldn’t have been back in college much before I started after her. I wondered whether she would have felt ill enough to tell a friend, to ask for help: but even if she had, neither she nor anyone else would know what was the matter with her.

  I reached Durham: made the turns: even stopped briefly for a red traffic light in a busy street: and fought down an inclination to go the last half mile at walking pace in order to avoid having to hold the throttle any more. But my ignorance of the time it would take for the poison to do irreparable damage added wings to my anxiety.

  Chapter 18

  It was getting dark when I swung into the College entrance, switched off the engine, and hurried up the steps to the door. There was no one at the porter’s desk and the whole place was very quiet. I ran down the corridors, trying to remember the turns, found the stairs, went up two flights. And it was then that I got lost. I had suddenly no idea which way to turn to find Elinor’s room.

  A thin elderly woman with pince nez was walking towards me carrying a sheaf of papers and a thick book on her arm. One of the staff, I thought.

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘which is Miss Tarren’s room?’

  She came close to me and looked at me. She did not approve of what she saw. What would I give, I thought, for a respectable appearance at this moment.

  ‘Please,’ I repeated. ‘She may be ill. Which is her room?’

  ‘You have blood on your face,’ she observed.

  ‘It’s only a cut… please tell me…’ I gripped her arm. ‘Look, show me her room, then if she’s all right and perfectly healthy I will go away without any trouble. But I think she may need help very badly. Please believe me…’

  ‘Very well,’ she said reluctantly. ‘We will go and see. It is just round here… and round here.’

  We arrived at Elinor’s door. I knocked hard. There was no answer. I bent down to the low key-hole. The key was in the lock on her side, and I could not see in.

  ‘Open it,’ I urged the woman, who was still eyeing me dubiously. ‘Open it, and see if she’s all right.’

  She put her hand on the knob and turned it. But the door didn’t budge. It was locked.

  I banged on the door again. There was no reply.

  ‘Now please
listen,’ I said urgently. ‘As the door is locked on the inside, Elinor Tarren is in there. She doesn’t answer because she can’t. She needs a doctor very urgently indeed. Can you get hold of one at once?’

  The woman nodded, looking at me gravely through the pince nez. I wasn’t sure that she believed me, but apparently she did.

  ‘Tell the doctor she has been poisoned with phenobarbitone and gin. About forty minutes ago. And please, please hurry. Are there any more keys to this door?’

  ‘You can’t push out the key that’s already there. We’ve tried on other doors, on other occasions. You will have to break the lock. I will go and telephone.’ She retreated sedately along the corridor, still breathtakingly calm in the face of a wild looking man with blood on his forehead and the news that one of her students was half way to the coroner. A tough-minded university lecturer.

  The Victorians who had built the place had not intended importunate men friends to batter down the girls’ doors. They were a solid job. But in view of the thin woman’s calm assumption that breaking in was within my powers, I didn’t care to fail. I broke the lock with my heel, in the end. The wood gave way on the jamb inside the room, and the door opened with a crash.

  In spite of the noise I had made, no students had appeared in the corridor. There was still no one about. I went into Elinor’s room, switched on the light, and swung the door back into its frame behind me.

  She was lying sprawled on top of her blue bedspread fast asleep, the silver hair falling in a smooth swathe beside her head. She looked peaceful and beautiful. She had begun to undress, which was why, I supposed, she had locked her door, and she was wearing only a bra and briefs under a simple slip. All these garments were white with pink rosebuds and ribbons. Pretty. Belinda would have liked them. But in these circumstances they were too poignant, too defenceless. They increased my grinding worry.

  The suit which Elinor had worn at Humber’s had been dropped in two places on the floor. One stocking hung over the back of a chair: the other was on the floor just beneath her slack hand. A clean pair of stockings lay on the dressing table, and a blue woollen dress on a hanger was hooked on to the outside of the wardrobe. She had been changing for the evening.