Dick Francis - Shattered

Bon-Bon’s grief for Martin had settled in her like an anchor steadying a ship. She was more in charge of the children and had begun to cope more easily with managing her house. I’d asked her whether she could face inviting Priam to dinner, but I hadn’t expected the skill with which she’d delivered him to me in secondary-guest capacity.

The children poured out of the house at that moment, addressing me unusually as “Uncle Gerard” and Priam as

“Sir.” They then bunched around Worthington and carried him off to play “make believe” in the garage block. Priam and I, left alone, made our way, with me leading him through the house, to Martin’s den, where I acted as instructed as host and persuaded Priam with my very best flattery to tell me how his other horses had prospered, as I’d seen one of his winners praised in the newspapers.

Priam, with his old boastfulness reemerging, explained how no one else but he could have brought those runners out at the right moment. No one, he claimed, knew more about readying a horse for a particular race than he did.

He smoothed the thin white hair that covered his scalp but showed pink skin beneath and conceded that Martin had contributed a little now and then to his training success.

Priam at my invitation relaxed on the sofa and sipped weak scotch and water while I sat in Martin’s chair and fiddled with small objects on his desk. I remembered Priam’s spontaneous tears at Cheltenham and not for the first time wondered if on a deeper level Priam was less sure of himself than he acted. There were truths he might tell if I got down to that tear-duct level, and this time I’d meet no garden hose on the way.

“How well,” I asked conversationally, “do you know Eddie Payne, Martin’s old valet?”

Surprised, Priam answered, “I don’t know him intimately, if that’s what you mean, but some days I give him the silks the jockeys will be wearing, so yes, I talk to Eddie then.”

“And Rose?” I suggested.

“Who?”

“Eddie Payne’s daughter. Do you know her?”

“Whyever do you ask?” Priam’s voice was mystified, but he hadn’t answered the question. Eddie and his daughter had first worn black masks, I thought, but could Priam have been Number Four?

I said with gratitude, “You were so kind, Priam, on that wretched day of Martin’s death, to take back to Broadway that tape I so stupidly left in my raincoat pocket in Martin’s car. I haven’t thanked you properly again since then.” I paused and then added as if one thought had nothing to do with the other, “I’ve heard a crazy rumor that you swapped two tapes. That you took the one from my pocket and left another.”

“Rubbish!”

“I agree.” I smiled and nodded. “I’m sure you took back to my place in Broadway the tape I’d been given at Cheltenham.”

“Well, then.” He sounded relieved. “Why mention it?”

“Because of course in Martin’s den, in this very room, in fact, you found tapes all over the place. Out of curiosity you may have slotted the tape I had left in the car into Martin’s VCR and had a look at it, and maybe you found it so boring and unintelligible that you wound it back, stuck the parcel shut again, and took it back to me at Broadway.”

“You’re just guessing,” Priam complained.

“Oh, sure. Do I guess right?”

Priam didn’t want to admit to his curiosity. I pointed out that it was to his advantage if it were known for a certainty what tape had vanished from Logan Glass.

He took my word for it and looked smug, but I upset him again profoundly by asking him who that evening, or early next morning, he had assured that the tape he’d delivered to Broadway had nothing to do with an antique necklace, whether worth a million or not.

Priam’s face stiffened. It was definitely a question he didn’t want to answer.

I said without pressure, “Was it Rose Payne?”

He simply stared, not ready to loosen his long-tight tongue.

“If you say who,” I went on in the same undemanding tone, “we can smother the rumors about you swapping any tapes.”

“There’s never any harm in speaking the truth,” Priam protested, but of course he was wrong, the truth could be disbelieved, and the truth could hurt.

“Who?” I repeated, and I suppose my lack of emphasis went some way towards persuading him to give the facts daylight.

“When Martin died,” he said, “I drove his things back here, as you know, and then as my own car was in dock having the... er... the tires, you see, needed replacing...”

I nodded without judgment or a smile.

Priam, encouraged, went on. “Well... Bon-Bon said I could take Martin’s car, she would have said yes to anything, she was terribly distraught, so I just drove Martin’s car to my home and then back to Broadway, with Baxter’s bag and your raincoat, and then I drove myself home again in it. In the morning, when I came in from morning exercise with the first lot of horses, my phone was ringing, and it was Eddie Payne...” Priam took a breath, but seemed committed to finishing. “Well... Eddie asked me then if I was sure the tape I’d taken back to your shop was without doubt the one he’d given you at Cheltenham, and I said I was absolutely certain, and as that was that, he rang off.”

Priam’s tale had ended. He took a deep swallow of whisky, and I poured him a stronger refill, a pick-you-up from the confessional.

Eddie himself had been to confession. Eddie hadn’t been able to face Martin’s funeral. Eddie was afraid of his daughter Rose, and Eddie had put on a black mask to do me a good deal of damage. If Tom and the Dobermans hadn’t been passing, Eddie’s sins would have involved a good deal more of deep-soul shriving.

It had taken such a lot of angst for Priam to answer a fairly simple question that I dug around in what I’d heard to see if Priam knew consequences that I didn’t.

Could he have been Blackmask Four? Unknown factor X?

Ed Payne had probably told Rose that the tape stolen from Logan Glass at the turnover of the new century had to do with a necklace. Rose had not necessarily believed him. Rose, knowing that such a necklace existed, but not realizing that the tape, if found, wasn’t itself worth much and certainly not a million, may have hungered for it fiercely enough to anesthetize everyone around at Bon-Bon’s house with cyclopropane, and gather up every videotape in sight.

I had thought at the time that it had been a man who had sprung out from behind the door and hit me unconscious, but on reflection it could have been Rose herself. Rose, agile, strong and determined, would without question lash out when it came to attacking a man. I knew all about that.

Thoughtfully I asked Priam, as if I’d forgotten I’d asked him before, “How well do you know Rose Payne?”

“I don’t know her,” he replied at once, and then, more slowly, revised the assertion and watered it down. “I’ve seen her around.”

“How well does she know Adam Force, would you say? Do you think Doctor Force would be foolish enough to lend her a cylinder of gas from a nursing home he visits?”

Priam looked as shocked as if I’d run him through with swords, but unfortunately from my own point of view he didn’t actually flag-wave any signs of guilt. He didn’t feel guilty; almost no one did.

Bon-Bon’s “early supper” proved to be just that, slightly to Priam’s disappointment. He preferred grandeur, but everyone sat around the big kitchen table, Marigold, Worthington, the children, Bon-Bon, me and Priam himself. I also acted as waiter, as I often did in that house, though Daniel, the elder boy, carried empty dishes sometimes.

“Gerard,” he said, standing solidly in front of me between courses, to gain my attention, “Who’s Victor?”