Dick Francis: Straight

Behind the policeman was a middle-aged woman who looked definitely flustered.

I thought immediately that news of Greville’s death had already arrived and that I probably hadn’t needed to come, but it seemed the Force was there for a different reason entirely.

The flustered lady gave me a blank stare and said, “That’s not Mr. Franklin. The guard said Mr. Franklin was on his way up.”

I allayed the police suspicions a little by saying again that I was Greville Franklin’s brother.

“Oh,” said the woman. “Yes, he does have a brother.”

They all swept their gaze over my comparative immobility.

“Mr. Franklin isn’t here yet,” the woman told me.

“Er...” I said, “what’s going on?”

They all looked disinclined to explain. I said to her, “I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”

“Adams,” she said distractedly. “Annette Adams. I’m your brother’s personal assistant.”

“I’m sorry,” I said slowly, “but my brother won’t be coming at all today. He was involved in an accident.”

Annette Adams heard the bad news in my voice. She put a hand over her heart in the classic gesture as if to hold it still in her chest and with anxiety said, “What sort of accident? A car crash? Is he hurt?”

She saw the answer clearly in my expression and with her free hand felt for one of the armchairs, buckling into it with shock.

“He died in hospital yesterday morning,” I said to her and to the policemen, “after some scaffolding fell on him last Friday. I was with him in the hospital.”

One of the policemen pointed at my dangling foot. “You were injured at the same time, sir?”

“No. This was different. I didn’t see his accident. I meant, I was there when he died. The hospital sent for me.”

The two policemen consulted each other’s eyes and decided after all to say why they were there.

“These offices were broken into during the weekend, sir. Mrs. Adams here discovered it when she arrived early for work, and she called us in.”

“What does it matter? It doesn’t matter now,” the lady said, growing paler.

“There’s a great deal of mess,” the policemen went on, “but Mrs. Adams doesn’t know what’s been stolen. We were waiting for your brother to tell us.”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” said Annette, gulping.

“Is there anyone else here?” I asked her. “Someone who could get you a cup of tea?” Before you faint, I thought, but didn’t say it.

She nodded a fraction, glancing at a door behind the desk, and I swung over there and tried to open it. It wouldn’t open: the knob wouldn’t turn.

“It’s electronic,” Annette said weakly. “You have to put in the right numbers...” She flopped her head back against the chair and said she couldn’t remember what today’s number was; it was changed often. She and the policemen had come through it, it seemed, and let it swing shut behind them.

One of the policemen came over and pounded on the door with his fist, shouting “Police” very positively, which had the desired effect like a reflex. Without finesse he told the much younger woman who stood there framed in the doorway that her boss was dead and that Mrs. Adams was about to pass out and was needing some strong hot sweet tea, love, like five minutes ago.

Wild-eyed, the young woman retreated to spread more consternation behind the scenes and the policemen nullified the firm’s defenses by wedging the electronic door open, using the chair from behind the reception desk.

I took in a few more details of the surroundings, beyond my first impression of gray. On the light greenish-gray of the carpet stood the armchair in charcoal and the desk in matt black unpainted and unpolished wood. The walls, palest gray, were hung with a series of framed geological maps, the frames black and narrow and uniform in size. The propped-open door, and another similar door to one side, still closed, were painted the same color as the walls. The total effect, lit by recessed spotlights in the ceiling, looked both straightforward and immensely sophisticated, a true representation of my brother.

Mrs. Annette Adams, still flaccid from too many unpleasant surprises on a Monday morning, wore a cream shirt, a charcoal-gray skirt and a string of knobbly pearls. She was dark-haired, in her late forties, perhaps, and from the starkness in her eyes, just beginning to realize, I guessed, that the upheaval of the present would be permanent.

The younger woman returned effectively with a scarlet steaming mug and Annette Adams sipped from it obediently for a while, listening to the policemen telling me that the intruder had not come in this way up the elevator, which was for visitors, but up another elevator at the rear of the building which was used by the staff of all floors of offices, and for freight. That elevator went down into a rear lobby which, in its turn, led out to the yard where cars and vans were parked: where Brad was presumably waiting at that moment.

The intruder had apparently ridden to the tenth floor, climbed some service stairs to the roof, and by some means had come down outside the building to the eighth floor, where he had smashed a window to let himself in.

“What sort of means?” I asked.

“We don’t know, sir. Whatever it was, he took it with him. Maybe a rope.” He shrugged. “We’ve had only a quick preliminary look around up there. We wanted to know what’s been stolen before we... er... See, we don’t want to waste our time for nothing.”

I nodded. Like Greville’s stolen shoes, I thought.

“This whole area round Hatton Garden is packed with the jewel trade. We get break-ins, or attempted break-ins, all the time.”

The other policeman said, “This place here is loaded with stones, of course, but the vault’s still shut and Mrs. Adams says nothing seems to be missing from the other stockrooms. Only Mr. Franklin has a key to the vault, which is where their more valuable faceted stones are kept.”

Mr. Franklin had no keys at all. Mr. Franklin’s keys were in my own pocket. There was no harm, I supposed, in producing them.

The sight of what must have been a familiar bunch brought tears to Annette Adams’s eyes. She put down the mug, searched around for a tissue and cried, “He really is dead, then,” as if she hadn’t thoroughly believed it before.

When she’d recovered a little I asked her to point out the vault key, which proved to be the longest and slenderest of the lot, and shortly afterward we were all walking through the propped-open door and down a central corridor with spacious offices opening to either side. Faces showing shock looked out at our passing. We stopped at an ordinary-looking door which might have been mistaken for a closet but certainly looked nothing like a vault.

“That’s it,” Annette Adams insisted, nodding; so I slid the narrow key into the small ordinary keyhole, and found that it turned unexpectedly counterclockwise. The thick and heavy door swung inward to the right under pressure and a light came on automatically, shining in what did indeed seem exactly like a large walk-in closet, with rows of white cardboard boxes on several plain white-painted shelves stretching away along the left-hand wall.

Everyone looked in silence. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed.

“Who knows what should be in the boxes?” I asked, and got the expected answer: my brother.

I took a step into the vault and took the lid off one of the nearest boxes, which bore a sticky label saying MgAl 2O 4, Burma. Inside the box there were about a dozen glossy white envelopes, each taking up the whole width. I lifted one out to open it.

“Be careful!” Annette Adams exclaimed, fearful of my clumsiness as I balanced on the crutches. “The packets unfold.”