Dick Francis: Hot Money

most times, after this ritual, he was released and at peace, and would retreat into a corner and sit staring into space or huddled up, rocking.

This time, however, he went over to the table, picked up the lighthouse, pulled it roughly apart into four or five pieces and threw them forcefully out of the wide-open window. Then he picked up the clock and with violence yanked the wires off, including the Mickey Mouse hands.

Malcolm was aghast. Docile Robin's rage shouted out of his mute body. His strength was a revelation.

He took the clock in his hand and walked round the room smashing it against the wall at each step. Step, smash, step, smash, step, smash.

"Stop him," Malcolm said in distress. "No… he's talking," I said.

"He's not talking."

"He's telling us."

Robin reached the window and threw the mangled clock far and high into the garden. Then he started shouting, roaring without words, his voice rough from disuse and hoarse with the change taking place from boy into man. The sound seemed to excite him until his body was reverberating, pouring out sound, the dam of silence swept away. "Aaah… aaah… aaah," and then real words, "No… No… No… Serena… No… Serena… No… Serena… No…" He shouted to the skies, to the fates, to the wicked unfairness of the fog in his brain. Shouted in fury and frenzy. "Serena… No… Serena… No…" and on and on until it became mindless, without meaning, just words.

I stepped close beside him in the end and yelled in his ear, "Serena's dead."

He stopped shouting immediately. "Serena's dead," I repeated. "Like the clock. Smashed. Finished. Dead."

He turned and looked at me vaguely, his mouth open, no sound coming out, the sudden silence as unnerving as the shouting had been.

"Serena – is – dead," I said, making each word separate, giving it weight.

"He doesn't understand, "Malcolm said: and Robin went away and sat in a corner with his arms round his knees and his head down, and began rocking.

"The nurses think he understands quite a lot," I said. "Whether he understands that Serena is dead, I don't know. But at least we've tried to tell him."

Robin went on rocking as if we weren't there.

"What does it matter?" Malcolm said helplessly.

"It matters because if he does understand, it may give him rest. I brought the lighthouse and the clock because I wondered if Robin remembered anything at all. I thought it worth trying… didn't expect quite these results… but I think he smashed the clock Serena gave him because it reminded him of her, because she gave it to him and Peter shortly before the car crash. Somewhere in that woolly head, things sometimes connect."

Malcolm nodded, puzzled and instinctively alarmed. "One could almost think it was that afternoon," I said, "seeing the twins happy at Quantum where she hungered to be, seeing you there with them, loving them; perhaps it was that afternoon which finally tipped her over into the insanity of trying to make her fantasy come true. It didn't come true… you met Moira… but I'm certain she tried."

Malcolm was staring, saying "No! Don't say it! Don't!"

I said it anyway. "I think Robin saw the hit-and-run driver who forced their car off the road. In whatever mangled dreamlike way, he knows who it was. No Serena, no Serena, no… You heard him. I've thought ever since New York that it could possibly have happened that way. Serena's obsession was full-blown a long time ago, long before she got rid of Moira. I think she killed Peter… and Coochie."

We all went back to Quantum a year later for the Grand Reopening Ceremony, the house bedecked with garlands and champagne corks popping.

After much soul-searching, Malcolm had decided to rebuild. Without Quantum as its centre, the family would have fallen apart, and he didn't want that to happen. When he told everyone of his intention, there was great communal relief, and he saw without question that it was the right thing to do.

The rancour level lessened dramatically after the arrival of the cheques and the production of his will for inspection, and I was suddenly not everyone's villain, though still and forever Alicia's.

Malcolm, having deleted Serena by codicil, sent his will to the Central Probate Office for registration and let everyone know it. Malcolm still felt that he had pampered and corrupted his children, but he had to admit they were happier because of it. Dramatically happier in some cases, like Donald and Helen whose problems had all been financial.

Helen redeemed her baubles and stopped painting china, and Donald paid off the finance company and the bank and ran the golf dub with a light heart.

A few weeks after Serena's death, Helen asked me over to Marblehill House. "A drink before dinner," she said.

I went on a freezing evening in December and she surprised me by kissing me in greeting. Donald was standing with his back to a roaring fire, looking contentedly pompous.

"We wanted to thank you," Helen said. "And I suppose… to apologise."

"There's no need."

"Oh, yes. We all know there is. Not everyone will say so, but they know."

"How's Malcolm?" Donald asked.

"He's fine."

Donald nodded. Even the fact that Malcolm and I were still together seemed no longer to worry him, and later, when we'd sat round the fire drinking for a while, he asked me to stay on for dinner. I stayed, and although we were never going to be in and out of each other's houses every five minutes, at least on that evening we reached a peaceful plateau as brothers.

Some time later, I went to see Lucy. She and Edwin had made no changes to their cottage and had no plans to move, much to Edwin's disgust.

"We should live somewhere more suitable," he said to her crossly. "I never thought we would stay here when you inherited."

Lucy looked at him with affection. "If you want to leave, Edwin, you can, now that you have money of your own."

He was disconcerted; open mouthed. "I don't want to leave," he said, and it was clearly the truth.

Lucy said to me, "I'll find a good use for my money: keep the capital, give away most of the income. We have no anxieties now, and that's a relief, I agree, but I haven't changed altogether. I don't believe in luxurious living. It's bad for the soul. I'm staying here. "She ate a handful of raisins determinedly, the old man looking out of her eyes.

Thomas was no longer her guest. Thomas, against all advice, had gone back to Berenice.

I called at Arden Haciendas one dark cold afternoon and Thomas opened the front door himself, looking blank when he saw me.

"Berenice is out," he said, letting me in.

"I came to see you. How are you doing?"

"Not so bad," he said, but he still looked defeated.

He gave me a drink. He knew where the gin was, and the tonic. He said Berenice and he had been going to marriage guidance sessions, but he didn't know that they were doing much good.

"You can get vasectomies reversed sometimes," I said.

"Yes, but I don't really want to. Suppose I did, and we had another girl? Unless Berenice can get over not having sons, I'm going to leave her again. I told her."

I gazed at him, awestruck. "What did she say?"

"Nothing much. I think she's afraid of me, really."

As long as it didn't go to his head, I thought that might not be at all a bad thing.

I went to see Gervase and Ursula soon after. The change in Ursula, who let me in, was like unwrapping a brown paper parcel and finding Christmas inside. The old skirt, shirt, pullover and pearls had vanished. She wore narrow scarlet trousers, a huge white sweater and a baroque gold chain. She smiled at me like a shy conspirator and came with me into the sitting-room.

Gervase, if not overpoweringly friendly, seemed ready for neutrality and a truce.