Dick Francis: Hot Money

The second time someone had tried to kill him…

"When was the first time?" I asked.

"Last Friday."

It was currently Tuesday evening.

"What happened?" I said.

He took a while over answering. When he did there was more sadness in his voice than angerand I listened to his tone behind the words and slowly understood his deepest fears.

"One moment I was walking the dogs… well, I think I was, but that's it, I don't really remember." He paused. "I think I had a bang on the head… Anyway, the last thing I remember is calling the dogs and opening the kitchen door. I meant to take them through the garden to that field with the stream and the willows. I don't know how far I went. I shouldn't think far. Anyway, I woke up in Moira's car in the garage… it's still there… and it's damn lucky I woke up at all… the engine was running -He stopped for a few moments.

"It's funny how the mind works. I knew absolutely at once that I had to switch off the engine. Extraordinary. Like a flash. I was in the back seat, sort of tumbled… toppled over… half lying. I got up and practically fell through between the front seats to reach the key in the ignition, and when the engine stopped I just lay there, you know, thinking that I was bloody uncomfortable but not having any more energy to move."

"Did anyone come?" I said, when he paused.

"No… I felt better after a while. I stumbled out of the car and was sick."

"Did you tell the police?"

"Sure, I told them." His voice sounded weary at the recollection. "it must have been about five when I set off with the dogs. Maybe seven by the time I called the police. I'd had a couple of stiff drinks by then and stopped shaking. They asked me why I hadn't called them sooner. Bloody silly. And it was the same lot who came after Moira. They think I did it, you know. Had her killed."

"I know."

"Did the witches tell you that too?"

"Joyce did. She said you couldn't have. She said you might have… er…" I baulked from repeating my mother's actual words, which were "throttled the little bitch in a rage", and substituted more moderately, "… been capable of killing her yourself, but not of paying someone else to do it."

He made a satisfied noise but no comment, and I added, "That seems to be the family consensus."

He sighed. it's not the police consensus. Far from it. I don't think they believed anyone had tried to kill me. They made a lot of notes and took samples… I ask you… of my vomit, and dusted over Moira's car for fingerprints, but it was obvious they were choked with doubts. I think they thought I'd been going to commit suicide and thought better of it… or else that I'd staged it in the hope people would believe I couldn't have killed Moira if someone was trying to kill me…" He shook his head. "I'm sorry I told them at all, and that's why we're not reporting tonight's attempt either."

He had been adamant, in the sales car-park, that we shouldn't.

"What about the bump on your head?" I asked.

"I had a swelling above my ear. Very tender, but not very big. The word I heard the police use about that was inconclusive'."

"And if you'd died…" I said thoughtfully.

He nodded. "If I'd died, it would have wrapped things up nicely for them. Suicide. Remorse. Implicit admission of guilt."

I drove carefully towards Cambridge, appalled and also angry. Moira's death hadn't touched me in the slightest, but the attacks on my father showed me I'd been wrong. Moira had had a right to live. There should have been rage, too, on her behalf.

"What happened to the dogs?" I said.

"What? Oh, the dogs. They came back… they were whining at the kitchen door. I let them in while I was waiting for the police. They were muddy… heaven knows where they'd been. They were tired anyway. I fed them and they went straight to their baskets and went to sleep."

"Pity they couldn't talk."

"What? Yes, I suppose so. Yes." He fell into silence, sighing occasionally as I thought over what he'd told me.

"Who," I said eventually, "knew you were going to Newmarket Sales?"

"Who?" He sounded surprised at the question, and then understood it. "I don't know." He was puzzled. "I've no idea. I didn't know myself until yesterday."

"Well, what have you been doing since the police left you on Friday night?"

"Thinking." And the thoughts, it was clear, had been melancholic: the thoughts now saddening his voice.

"Mm," I said, "along the lines of why was Moira killed?"

"Along those lines."

I said it plainly. "To stop her taking half your possessions?"

He said unwillingly, "Yes."

"And the people who had a chief interest in stopping her were your likely heirs. Your children."

He was silent.

I said, "Also perhaps their husbands and wives, also perhaps even the witches."

"I don't want to believe it," he said. "How could I have put a murderer into the world."

"People do," I said.

"Ian!"

The truth was that, apart from poor Robin, I didn't know my half- brothers and half-sisters well enough to have any certainty about any of them. I was usually on speaking terms with them all, but didn't seek them out. There had been too much fighting, too many rows: Vivien's children disliked Alicia's, Alicia's disliked them and me, Vivien hated Joyce and Joyce hated Alicia very bitterly indeed. Under Coochie's reign, the whole lot had been banned from sleeping in the house, if not from single-day visits, with the result that a storm of collective resentment had been directed at me whom she had kept and treated as her own.

"Apart from thinking," I said, "what have you been doing since Friday night?"

"When the police had gone, I… I…" he stopped.

"The shakes came back?" I suggested. "Yes. Do you understand that?"

"I'd have been scared silly," I said. "Stupid not to be. I'd have felt that whoever had tried to kill me was prowling about in the dark waiting for me to be alone so he could have another go."

Malcolm audibly swallowed. "I telephoned to the hire firm I use now and told them to send a car to fetch me. Do YOU know what panic feels like?"

"Not that sort, I guess."

"I was sweating, and it was cold. I could feel my heart thumping… banging away at a terrible rate. it was awful. I Packed some things… I couldn't concentrate."

He shifted in his seat as the outskirts of Cambridge came up in the headlights and began to give me directions to the hotel where he said he'd spent the previous four nights.

"Does anyone know where you're staying?" I asked, turning corners. "Have you seen any of your old chums?"

Malcolm knew Cambridge well, had been at university there and still had friends at high tables. It must have seemed to him a safe city to bolt to, but it was where I would have gone looking for him, if not much else failed.

"Of course I have," he said in answer to my question. "I spent Sunday with the Rackersons, dined with old Digger in Trinity last night… it's nonsense to think they could be involved."

"Yes," I agreed, pulling up outside his hotel. "All the same, go and pack and check out of here, and we'll go somewhere else."

"It's not necessary," he protested.

"You appointed me as minder, so I'm minding," I said.

He gave me a long look in the dim light inside the car.

The doorman of the hotel stepped forward and opened the door beside me, an invitation to step out.

"Come with me," my father said.

I was both astounded by his fear and thought it warranted. I asked the doorman where I should park, and turned at his suggestion through an arch into the hotel's inner court way From there, through a back door and comfortable old-fashioned hallways, Malcolm and I went up one flight of red-carpeted stairs to a lengthy winding corridor. Several people we passed glanced down at my torn trouser-leg with the dried-blood scenery inside, but no one said anything: was it still British politeness, I wondered, or the new creed of not getting involved? Malcolm, it seemed, had forgotten the problem existed.