Dick Francis: Dead Cert

I stared at the page until the words faded into a blur.

What happened next was partly, I supposed, delayed reaction from the abysmal fear I felt when I looked into the barrel of Uncle George's gun; and partly it was hunger and a wave of deathly tiredness, and the sudden letting up of the stresses of the past weeks. My hands, my whole body, began to shake. I braced my foot against the leg of the table I was sitting at and gripped the big book hard to stop it. It went on for minutes, until I could have cried with weakness, but gradually the spasm lessened, and the tension went out of my muscles, and I was just plain cold.

Chichen Itza. I stood up stiffly and closed the book and put it back on the shelf, and went soberly out to the car. I had set a better trap than I knew, pretending to be on the point of understanding what Joe might have said before he died.

I remembered clearly the study lined with glass cases. I could see the heavy carved oak desk, the folders devoted to Indian tribes, and the one separate folder clearly marked 'Mayas'. Uncle George had told me too much about the Mayas: and he'd known that Chichen Itza would lead me conclusively to him.

What I had not managed to do for Kate by loving her, I had done by tearing her world apart.

She stood in front of me, rigidly controlling herself, with a look of such acrid unrelenting hatred that I tasted my misery literally as a bitterness in the mouth. The banked fires were burning fiercely at last. There was a new depth and maturity in her face, as if in two weeks she had become wholly a woman. It made her more desirable than ever.

The inquest and inquiry into the life and death of George Penn had been adjourned twice, and had just ended; and police, witnesses, and Kate and I were standing in the hall of the Brighton court buildings, preparing to leave.

The verdict of temporary insanity was merciful, but there had been no hiding from news-scenting journalists the extent of Uncle George's criminal activities, and L. C. Perth and Marconicars had been front page news, on and off, for a fortnight.

My getting Uncle George to kill himself had been no help after all to Aunt Deb. It had been impossible to keep the truth from her, and shock and distress had brought on a series of heart attacks, of which the fourth was fatal. But for Kate, though she knew nothing about it, it was still the best thing. She had had to face the knowledge of his guilt, but not his trial and punishment.

But my letters of condolence had been unanswered. My telephone calls had regularly found her 'out'. And now I saw why. She blamed me alone for the sorrows which had come to her.

'I loathe you,' she said implacably. 'You nauseate me. You wormed your way into our house and accepted everything we gave you-' I thought of those gentle kisses, and so, from the extra flash in her eyes, did Kate- 'and all you have done in return is to hound a poor old man to his death, and kill a defenceless old woman as a result. I have no uncle and no aunt. I have no one anywhere at all. I have no one.' She spoke in anguish. 'Why did you do it? Why couldn't you leave them alone? Why did you have to destroy my home? You knew how much I loved them. I can't bear to look at you, I loathe you so much-'

I swallowed, and tried to work some saliva into my dry mouth. I said, 'Do you remember the children who had to be driven to school by a judo expert to keep them safe?'

But Kate stared blackly back as if she hadn't heard.

'You are the most beastly person I have ever known, and although you have made it impossible for me to forget you, I shall never think of you without- without-' Her throat moved convulsively as if she were going to be sick. She turned away abruptly and walked unsteadily out through the big main door into the street.

The flash of camera bulbs met her and caught her unawares, and I saw her throw up her arm in a forlorn attempt to hide her face. The vulnerability and the loneliness in the droop of her shoulders cried out for comfort, and I, who most wanted to give it, was the only person she wouldn't accept it from. I watched her walk quickly through the questioning newspapermen and get into the hired car which was waiting for her.

It drove off. I stared after it, numbly.

Presently I became aware that Lodge was standing at my elbow and had been talking for some seconds. I hadn't heard a word he said, and he appeared to be waiting for a reply.

'I beg your pardon,' I said. 'What did you say?'

Lodge glanced out through the door where Kate had gone and sighed. 'It wasn't very important- Look, she'll see things more reasonably in a little while, when she begins to think straight again. I heard a good deal of what she said- but you aren't to blame because her uncle took to crime.'

'If I had known-' I stopped, on the verge of adding the give-away words 'for sure': 'If I had known that George Penn was Claud Thiveridge, I would have done things differently.'

'Things worked out well for the Penns, I think,' said Lodge. 'A quick end has its merits.'

His tone was loaded with meaning, and I knew that he half guessed what part I had played in Uncle George's death. He had several times earlier remarked that my disappearance from Brighton at the moment of success was out of character, and had shown polite scepticism over my excuse that I was growing anxious about my horse. He had mentioned pointedly that the Brighton police, listening in the Marconicar taxi to Uncle George's ravings, had heard a faint murmur (indistinguishable) in the background, a single shot, and nothing more. They had not been able to account for this, apart from later finding the microphone switched off and a bullet in the wall, and had come to the conclusion that Uncle George had been testing the old pistol to see if it were in working order. The shot had, however, brought them in haste to the Marconicar buildings.

'You may be right,' I said non-committally to Lodge. His eyelids flickered, and he smiled and changed the subject.

'The Marconicar drivers come up in court again this week. You'll be there to give evidence, I suppose,' he said.

'Yes,' I agreed, not liking the prospect.

All the drivers who had been looking for me had been alarmed by the shot and the silence on their radios. Some had begun to drive back to Brighton, some had made for London, and one or two had left their taxis and started out on foot. But all had quickly been rounded up, as following the rather vague directions I had phoned to Lodge, the police had begun making road blocks round them while they were still listening to Uncle George. Now the drivers faced charges ranging from intimidation and grievous bodily harm to murder itself.

Records discovered in Uncle George's study, inside a folder marked with gory humour 'Notes on Human Sacrifices', made it clear that Joe Nantwich had indeed been knifed by the man who had been wearing my tie.

And Uncle George's motives were now clear too. Keeping up old standards of luxury had been too much for his income after the war, and instead of making Aunt Deb face reality, or facing it himself, he had gradually spent most of his capital. With almost the last of it he had bought Marconicars and launched into crime. He had directed everything through Fielder and had apparently never seen with his own eyes the brutal results of his orders. I doubted whether his misdeeds had seemed either more or less real to him than the primitive barbarities he spent his time studying.

The police had found neat lists, in flies going back four years, of the money he had collected from the little terrorized businesses; and occasionally against the name of a caf‚ or a shop or a pub, Lodge told me, was written the single word, 'Persuaded'.

The racing record was shorter and contained lists of sums of money which the police did not know the purpose of; but one sheet headed 'Joe Nantwich' was clear enough. It was a list of dates and amounts, of which the smallest was one hundred pounds. And underneath was drawn a thick line, with the words: 'Account closed' printed in Uncle George's neat handwriting.