Dick Francis: Hot Money

The chauffeur goggled a bit at the sight of the house, with its missing centre section and boarded-up windows and large new sign saying: "Keep out. Building unsafe."

"Reconstructions," Malcolm said.

The chauffeur nodded and left, and we carried the Fortnum amp; Mason bags across the windy central expanse and down the passage on the far side of the staircase, going towards the playroom. Black plastic sheeting still covered all the exposed floor space, not taut and pegged down, but wrinkled and slack. Our feet made soft crunching noises on the grit under the plastic and there were small puddles here and there as if rain had blown in. The boarded-up doors and the barred stairs looked desolate, and far above, over the roof, the second black plastic sheet flapped like sails between the rafters. Sad, sad house. Malcolm hadn't seen it like that, and was deeply depressed. He looked at the very solid job the police had made of hammering the plywood to the door-frame of the playroom and asked me politely how I proposed to get in. "With your fingernails?" he suggested.

I produced a few tools from one of the bags. "There are other shops in Piccadilly," I said. "Boy scouts come prepared."

I'd thought it likely that I wouldn't be able to get the plywood off easily as I understood they'd used four-inch nails, so I'd brought a hammer and chisel and a saw, and before Malcolm's astonished gaze proceeded to dig a hole through the plywood and cut out a head-high, body-wide section instead. Much quicker, less sweat.

"You didn't think of all this since yesterday, did you?" he asked.

"No. On the plane. There were a lot of hours then."

I freed the cut-out section and put it to one side, and we went into the playroom. Nothing had changed in there. Malcolm fingered the bicycles when his eyes had adjusted to the partial light, and I could see the sorrow in his body.

It was by that time nine-thirty. If Joyce by any chance phoned the right person first, the earliest we could have a visitor was about half past ten. After that anything was possible. Or nothing.

Malcolm had wanted to know what we would do if someone came.

"All the family have keys to the outside kitchen door," I said. "We never had the locks changed, remember? Our visitor will go into the kitchen that way and we will go round and… er…"

"Lock him in," Malcolm said.

"Roughly, yes. And then talk about confessing. Talk about what to do with the future."

I went round myself to the kitchen door and made sure it did still unlock normally, which it did. I locked it again after a brief look inside. Still a mess in there, un swept

I returned to the playroom and from the bags produced two stick-on mirrors, each about eight inches by ten.

"I thought you'd brought champagne," Malcolm grumbled. "Not saws and bloody looking-glasses."

"The champagne's there. No ice."

"It's cold enough without any bloody ice." He wandered aimlessly round the playroom, finally slumping into one of the armchairs. We had both worn layers of the warmest clothes we had, leaving the suitcases in the Ritz, but the raw November air looked as if it would be a match for the Simpson's vicuna overcoat and my new Barbour, and the gloves I had bought for us in the same shop the day before. We were at least out of the wind which swirled round and through the house, but there was no heat but our own.

I stuck one of the mirrors onto the cut-out piece of plywood, and the other at the same height onto the wall which faced the playroom door, the side wall of the staircase: stuck it not exactly opposite the door but a little further along towards the hall.

"What are you doing?" Malcolm asked.

"Just making it possible for us to see anyone come up the drive without showing ourselves. Would you mind sitting in the other chair, and telling me when the mirrors are at the right angle? Look into the one on the stair wall. I'll move the other. OK?"

He rose and sat in the other chair as I'd asked, and I moved the plywood along and angled it slightly until he said, "Stop. That's it. I can see a good patch of drive."

I went and took his place and had a look for myself. It would have been better if the mirrors had been bigger, but they served the purpose. Anyone who came to the house that way would be visible. If they came across the fields we'd have to rely on our ears. By eleven, Malcolm was bored. By eleven-thirty, we'd temporarily unbolted and unlocked the door at the end of the passage and been out into the bushes to solve the problem posed by no plumbing. By twelve, we were into Bollinger in disposable glasses (disgusting, Malcolm said) and at twelve-thirty ate biscuits and pate.

No one came. It seemed to get colder. Malcolm huddled inside his overcoat in the armchair and said it had been a rotten idea in the first place.

I had had to promise him that we wouldn't stay overnight. I thought it unlikely anyway that someone would choose darkness rather than daylight for searching for a small piece of paper that could be anywhere in a fairly large room, and I'd agreed to the chauffeur returning to pick us up at about six. Left to myself, I might have waited All night, but the whole point of the exercise was that Malcolm himself should be there. We would return in the morning by daybreak.

He said, "This person we're waiting for… you know who it is, don't you?"

"Well… I think so."

"How sure are you, expressed as a percentage?"

"Um… ninety-five." "That's not enough."

"No, that's why we're here."

"Edwin," he said. "It's Edwin, isn't it?"

I glanced across at him, taking my gaze momentarily off the mirrors. He wanted it to be Edwin. He could bear it to be Edwin. In Edwin's own words, he could have faced it. Edwin might possibly have been capable of killing Moira, I thought: an unplanned killing, shoving her head into the potting compost because the open bag of it gave him the idea. I didn't think he had the driving force, the imagination or the guts to have attempted the rest.

When I didn't contradict him, Malcolm began saying, "If Edwin comes…" and it was easier to leave it that way.

Time crept on. It was cold. By two-thirty, to stoke our internal fires, we were eating rich dark fruit cake and drinking claret. (Heresy, Malcolm said. We should have had the claret with the pate and the champagne with the cake. As at weddings? I asked. God damn you, he said.)

I didn't feel much like laughing. It was a vigil to which there could be no good end. Malcolm knew as well as I did that he might be going to learn something he fervently didn't want to know. He didn't deep down want anyone to come. And I wanted it profoundly.

By three-thirty, he was restless. "You don't really mean to go through all this again tomorrow, do you?"

I watched the drive. No change, as before. "The Ritz might give us a packed lunch."

"And Monday? Not Monday as well."

He'd agreed on three days before we'd started. The actuality was proving too much.

"We'll give up on Monday when it gets dark," I said.

"You're so bloody persistent."

I watched the mirrors. COME, I thought. COME.

"Joyce might have forgotten the phone calls," Malcolm said.

"She wouldn't forget."

"Edwin might have been out."

"That's more likely."

A light-coloured car rolled up the drive, suddenly there. No attempt at concealment. No creeping about, looking suspicious. All confidence. Not a thought given to entrapment. I sat still, breathing deeply.

She stood up out of the car, tall and strong. She went round to the passenger side, opened the door, and lifted out a brown cardboard box which she held in front of her, with both arms round it as one holds groceries. I'd expected her to go straight round to the kitchen door, but she didn't do that, she walked a few steps into the central chasm, looking up and around her as if with awe.