Dick Francis - The Edge

'The hotel's all right, but someone should strangle that rich… that arrogant… that insufferable Sheridan.' Disgust vibrated in her voice as she suddenly let go of some clearly banked-up and held-back emotion. 'He's unbearable. He's spoiling it for others. They all paid a fortune to come on this trip and they're entitled not to be upset.'

'Did something happen?' I asked.

'Yes, at breakfast.' The memory displeased her. 'Zak put on the next scene of the mystery and Sheridan shouted him down three times. I went over to Sheridan to ask him to be quiet and he grabbed my wrist and tried to pull me on to his lap, and I overbalanced and fell and hit the table hard where he was sitting, and I caught the cloth somehow and pulled it with me and everything on it landed on the floor. So you can imagine the fuss. I was on my knees, there was orange juice and broken plates and food and coffee everywhere and Sheridan was saying loudly it was my fault for being clumsy.'

'And I can imagine,' I said, seeing resignation more than indignation now in her face, 'that Bambi Lorrimore took no notice, that Mercer hurried to help you up and apologize, and Mrs Young enquired if you were hurt.'

She looked at me in amazement. 'You were there!'

'No. It just figures.'

'Well… that's exactly what happened. A waiter came to deal with the mess, and while he was kneeling there Sheridan said loudly that the waiter was sneering at him and he would get him fired.' She paused. 'And I suppose you can tell me again what happened next?'

She was teasing, but I answered, 'I'd guess Mercer assured the waiter he wouldn't be fired and took him aside and gave him twenty dollars.'

Her mouth opened. 'You were there.'

I shook my head. 'He gave me twenty dollars when Sheridan shoved me the other evening.'

'But that's awful.'

'Mercer's a nice man caught in an endless dilemma. Bambi's closed her mind to it. Xanthe seeks comfort somewhere else.'

Nell thought it over and delivered her judgement, which was much like my own.

'One day, beastly Sheridan will do something his father can't pay for.'

'He's a very rich man,' I said.

'It's nothing to do with his birthday, nor with his telephone numbers, nor addresses, past or present, nor his bank accounts, nor his national insurance.'

Mrs Baudelaire's light voice in my ear, passing on the bad news on Wednesday morning.

'Val Catto is working on your quarry's credit card numbers now,' she said. 'And he wants to know why he's doing all this research. He says he's looked up your quarry's divorced wife's personal numbers also and he cannot see one-five-one anywhere, with or without three unknown digits in front.'

I signed audibly, disappointed.

'How important is it?' she asked.

'It's impossible to tell. It could be pointless, it could solve all our problems. Empty box or jackpot, or anywhere in between. Please would you tell the Brigadier that one-five-one is the combination that unlocks the right-hand latch of a black crocodile briefcase. We have three unknowns on the left.'

'Good gracious,' she said.

'Could you say I would appreciate his instructions?'

'I could, young man. Why don't you just steal the briefcase and take your time?'

I laughed. 'I've thought of that, but I'd better not. Ornot yet, anyway. If the numbers have any logic, this way is safest.'

'Val would presumably prefer you didn't get arrested.'

Or murdered, perhaps, I thought.

'I would say,' I agreed, 'that getting myself arrested would lose me my job.'

'You'd no longer be invisible?'

'Quite right.'

'And I'm afraid,' she said, 'that I have some more negative news for you.'

'What is it?' I asked.

'Bill says the samples of water you sent him were just that, water.'

'That's good news, actually.'

'Oh? Well, good, then.'

I reflected. 'I think I'll phone you again this evening before we leave Winnipeg.'

'Yes, do,' she agreed. 'The further west you go the bigger the time change and the longer it takes to get replies from Val Catto.'

'Mm.'

Mrs Baudelaire couldn't ring the Brigadier in the middle of his night, nor in the middle of hers. Toronto, where she lived, was five hours behind London, Winnipeg six, Vancouver eight. At breakfast time in Vancouver, London 's office workers began travelling home. Confusing for carrier pigeons.

'Good luck,' she said. 'I'll talk to you later.'

I was used by now to her abrupt disappearances. I put my receiver down, hearing only silence on the line, and wondered what she looked like, and how deeply she was ill. I would go back to Toronto, I thought, and see her.

I sped again on the bus to the races and found that overnight Assiniboia Downs had sprouted all the ballyhoo of Woodbine, T-shirt stalls, banners and besashed bosoms Supporting Canadian Racing included.

I again spent most of the afternoon looking for gaunt-face, coming in the end to the conclusion that whatever he was doing on the train he wasn't travelling because of an overpowering interest in racing. The racegoers from the train were on the whole easily identifiable as they all seemed to have been issued with large red and white rosettes with Race Train Passenger emblazoned on them in gold and the rosettes proved not to be confined to those in the front half of the train because I came across Zak wearing one too, and he told me that everyone had been given one, the owners included, and where was mine.

I didn't know about them, I said. Too bad, he said, because they entitled everyone to free entry, free race-cards and free food. They were gifts from the racecourse, he said. Nell should have one for me, he thought.

I asked him how the scene from the mystery had fared that morning, as Nell had described what had happened the day before.

'A lot better without that bastard Sheridan.'

'Wasn't he there?'

'I got Nell to tell his father that if Sheridan came to breakfast we wouldn't be putting on our scene, and it did the trick. No Sheridan.' He grinned. 'No Lorrimores at all, in fact.' He looked around. 'But they're all here, Sheridan included. They were getting out of a stretch limo when we rolled up in our private bus. That's where we were given these rosettes, on the bus. How did you get here, then?'

'On a public bus.'

'Too bad.'

His batteries were running at half-speed, neither highly charged up nor flat. Under the mop of curls his face, without the emphasizing make-up he wore perpetually on the train, looked younger and more ordinary: it was David Flynn who was at the races, not Zak.'Are all the actors here? ' I asked.

'Oh, sure. We have to know what happens here today. Have to be able to talk about it to the owners tonight. Don't forget, it's a racing mystery, after all.'

I thought that I had forgotten, in a way. The real mystery that I was engaged in tended to crowd the fiction out.

'What are you betting on in our race? ' he asked. 'I suppose Premiere will win. What do you think?'

' Upper Gumtree,' I said.

'It's supposed to be half asleep,' he objected.

'It's got a nice face,' I said.

He looked at me sideways. 'You're crazy, you know that?'

'I am but mad north-north-west.'

'When the wind is southerly,' he said promptly, 'I know a hawk from a handsaw.' He laughed. There isn't an actor born who doesn't hope to play Hamlet.'

'Have you ever?'

'Only in school. But once learned, never forgotten. Shall I give you my "To be or not to be"?'

'No.'

'You slay me. See you tonight.'

He went off with a medium spring to his step and I saw him later with his arms round Donna's shoulders, which wasn't (as far as I knew) in his script.

Most of the owners came down from the Clubhouse to watch the saddling of the runners in the Jockey Club Race Train Stakes, and all the sportier of them wore the rosettes.Filmer didn't: there was no lightheartedness in him. Daffodil however had fastened hers to her cleavage, the red, white and gold popping out now and again past the long-haired chinchillas. Mrs Young wore hers boldly on her lapel. Mr Young's wasn't in sight.