Dick Francis - Shattered

Glassblowers were commonly arrogant people, chiefly because the skill was so difficult to learn. Hickory already showed signs of arrogance but if he became a notable expert he would have to be forgiven. As for myself, my uncle (as arrogant as they came) had insisted that I learn humility first, second and third, and had refused to let me near his furnace until I’d shed every sign of what he called “cockiness.”

“Cockiness” had broken out regularly after his death, humbling me when I recognized it. It had taken perhaps ten years before I had it licked, but vigilance would be necessary for life.

Irish had grown accustomed to brewing the large jugs of hot tea to replace the sweat lost to the furnace. I sat on a box and drank thirstily and all day watched my apprentice improve considerably, even though, with exhausted rests, there was generally a lot of swearing and a whole heap of shattered glass.

There were, of course, few customers to interrupt the lesson and by five o’clock on this bleakly cold January afternoon I sent my three helpers home and with gloom did some long-overdue paperwork. The cash stolen on New Year’s Eve left a depressing hole in what was otherwise a cheerful season. It wasn’t difficult after a while to lay aside the minus figures and pick up the books I’d lent to Martin.

My favorite of all historic goblets was a glowing red cup, six and a half inches high (16.5 centimeters), constructed around the year three hundred and something A.D. (a fair time ago, when one looked back from two thousand). It was made of lumps of glass, held fast in an intricate gold cage (a technique from before blowing was invented), and would appear green in different lights. Flicking through the early pages in one of the books, I came across the goblet’s picture with my usual pleasure and a few pages later smiled over the brilliant gold and blue glass Cretan sunrise necklace that I’d once spent days copying. Sleepily, I by accident let the book begin to slide off my knees towards the smooth brick floor and, by luck, caught it without damage to its glossy construction.

Relieved at the catch, and berating myself for such clumsiness in not holding on more tightly to a valued treasure, I didn’t notice at first a thin buff envelope that lay at my feet. With a reaction accelerating from puzzlement to active curiosity I laid the old book down carefully and picked up the new-looking envelope, which I supposed had been held within the leaves and had fallen out when I made my grab.

The envelope from inside my book was addressed by computer printer not to me but to Martin Stukely, Esq., Jockey.

I had no qualms at all in taking out the single-page letter inside, and reading it.

Dear Martin,

You are right, it is the best way. I will take the tape, as you want, to Cheltenham races on New Year’s Eve.

This knowledge is dynamite.

Take care of it.

The letter too was written on a computer, though the name given as signature had been printed in a different font. There was no address or telephone number on the letter itself, but faintly across the stamp on the envelope there was a round postmark. After long concentration with a magnifying glass, the point of origin seemed to me only “xet” around the top and “evo” around the bottom. The date alone was easily readable, though looking ane mic as to ink.

The letter had been sent on 17.XII.99.

December 17. Less than a month ago.

xet

evo

There weren’t after all many places in Great Britain with an x in their name, and I could think of nowhere else that fitted the available letters other than Exeter, Devon.

When I reached Directory Inquiries, I learned that there was indeed a Victor Verity in Exeter. A disembodied voice said, “The number you require is...” I wrote it down, but when I called Victor Verity I spoke not to him, but to his widow. Her dear Victor had passed away during the previous summer. Wrong Verity.

I tried Inquiries again.

“Very sorry,” said a prim voice, not sounding it, “there is no other Victor or V. Verity in the Exeter telephone area which covers most of Devon.”

“How about an ex-directory number?”

“Sorry, I can’t give you that information.”

Victor Waltman Verity was either ex-directory or had mailed his letter far from home.

Cursing him lightly I glanced with reluctance at the money job half done on my computer... and there, of course, lay the answer. Computers. Internet.

The Internet among other miracles might put an address to a name anywhere, that’s to say it would if I could remember the open sesame code. I entered my Internet-access number and typed in my password, and sat hopefully, flicking mentally through possibilities as the machine burped and whined until a connection was made.

After a while a website address drifted into my mind, but it was without certainty that I tried it: www.192.com.

192. com was right.

I started a search for Verity in Devon, and as if eager to be of service, the Internet, having surveyed every fact obtainable in the public domain (such as the electoral registers), came up with a total of twenty-two Devon-based Veritys, but none of them any longer was Victor.

Dead end.

I tried Verity in Cornwall: sixteen but still no Victor.

Try Somerset, I thought. Not a Victor Verity in sight.

Before reaching to switch off, I skimmed down the list and at the end of it noticed that at No. 19 Lorna Terrace, Taunton, Somerset, there lived a Mr. Waltman Verity. Good enough to try, I thought.

Armed with the address I tried Directory Inquiries again, but ran up against the same polite barrier of virtual nonexistence. Ex-directory. Sorry. Too bad.

Although Saturday was a busier day in the showroom, my thoughts returned continuously to Taunton and Victor Waltman Verity.

Taunton... Having nothing much else urgently filling my Sunday, I caught a westbound train the next morning, and asked directions to Lorna Terrace.

Whatever I expected Victor Waltman Verity to look like, it was nothing near the living thing. Victor Waltman Verity must have been all of fifteen.

The door of No. 19 was opened by a thin woman dressed in pants, sweater and bedroom slippers, with a cigarette in one hand and big pink curlers in her hair. Thirty something, perhaps forty, I thought. Easygoing, with a resigned attitude to strangers on her doorstep.

“Er... Mrs. Verity?” I asked.

“Yeah. What is it?” She sucked smoke, unconcerned.

“Mrs. Victor Waltman Verity?”

She laughed. “I’m Mrs. Waltman Verity, Victor’s my son.” She shouted over her shoulder towards the inner depths of the narrow terraced house. “Vic, someone to see you,” and while we waited for Victor Waltman Verity to answer the call, Mrs. Verity looked me over thoroughly from hair to sneakers and went on enjoying a private giggle.

Victor Waltman Verity appeared quietly from along the narrow hallway and regarded me with curiosity mixed, I thought, with the possibility of alarm. He himself was as tall as his mother, as tall as Martin. He had dark hair, pale gray eyes and an air of knowing himself to be as intelligent as any adult. His voice, when he spoke, was at the cracked stage between boy and man, and his face had begun to grow from the soft lines of childhood into adult planes.

“What’ve you been up to, young Vic?” his mother asked, and to me she said, “It’s bloody cold out here. Want to come in?”

“Er,” I said. I was suffering more from the unexpected than the cold, but she waited for no answer and walked back past the boy until she was out of sight. I pulled the envelope sent to Martin out of a pocket and immediately set the alarm racing above the curiosity in young Victor.