Dick Francis - Straight

“Nonsense.” His mouth seemed dry, however.

I pulled out of a pocket the microcassette recorder and laid it on his workbench.

“This is a voice activated,” I said. “Greville left it switched on one day when he went to lunch, and this is what he found on the tape when he returned.” I pressed the switch and the voice that was familiar to both of us spoke revealing forth:

“I’M IN HIS OFFICE NOW AND I CAN’T FIND THEM. HE HIDES EVERYTHING, HE’S SECURITY MAD, YOU KNOW THAT. I CAN’T ASK. HE’D NEVER TELL ME, AND I DON’T THINK HE TRUSTS ME. PO-FACED ANNETTE DOESN’T SNEEZE UNLESS HE TELLS HER TO...”

Jason’s voice, full of the cocky street-smart aggression that went with the orange spiky hair, clicked off eventually into silence. Prospero Jenks worked some saliva into his mouth and carefully made sure the recorder was not still alive and listening.

“Jason wasn’t talking to me,” he said unconvincingly. “He was talking to someone else.”

“Jason was the regular messenger between you and Greville,” I said. “I sent him round here myself last week. Jason wouldn’t take much seducing to bring you information along with the merchandise. But Greville found out. It compounded his sense of betrayal. So when you and he were talking in the Orwell at Ipswich, what was his opinion of Jason?”

He made a gesture of half-suppressed fury.

“I don’t know how you know all this,” he said.

It had taken nine days and a lot of searching and a good deal of guessing at possibilities and probabilities, but the pattern was now a reliable path through at least part of the maze, and no other interpretation that I could think of explained the facts.

I said again, “What did he say about Jason?”

Prospero Jenks capitulated. “He said he’d have to leave Saxony Franklin. He said it was a condition of us ever doing business again. He said I was to tell Jason not to turn up for work on the Monday.”

“But you didn’t do that,” I said.

“Well, no.”

“Because when Greville died, you decided to try to steal not only five stones but the lot.”

The blue eyes almost smiled. “Seemed logical, didn’t it?” he said. “Grev wouldn’t know. The insurance would pay. No one would lose.”

Except the underwriters, I thought. But I said, “The diamonds weren’t insured. Are not now insured. You were stealing them directly from Greville.”

He was almost astounded, but not quite.

“Greville told you that, didn’t he?” I guessed.

Again the little-boy shame. “Well, yes, he did.”

“In the Orwell?”

“Yes.”

“Pross,” I said, “did you ever grow up?”

“You don’t know what growing up is. Growing up is being ahead of the game.”

“Stealing without being found out?”

“Of course. Everyone does it. You have to make what you can.”

“But you have this marvelous talent,” I said.

“Sure. But I make things for money. I make what people like. I take their bread, whatever they’ll pay. Sure, I get a buzz when what I’ve made is brilliant, but I wouldn’t starve in a garret for art’s sake. Stones sing to me. I give them life. Gold is my paintbrush. All that, sure. But I’ll laugh behind people’s backs. They’re gullible. The day I understood all customers are suckers is the day I grew cup.”

I said, “I’ll bet you never said all that to Greville.”

“Do me a favor. Grev was a saint, near enough. The only truly good person through and through I’ve ever known. I wish I hadn’t cheated him. I regret it something rotten.”

I listened to the sincerity in his voice and believed him, but his remorse had been barely skin deep, and nowhere had it altered his soul.

“Jason,” I said, “knocked me down outside St. Catherine’s Hospital and stole the bag containing Greville’s clothes.”

“No.” The Jenks denial was automatic, but his eyes were full of shock.

I said, “I thought at the time it was an ordinary mugging. The attacker was quick and strong. A friend who was with me said the mugger wore jeans and a woolly hat, but neither of us saw his face. I didn’t bother to report it to the police because there was nothing of value in the bag.”

“So how can you say it was Jason?”

I answered his question obliquely.

“When I went to Greville’s firm to tell them he was dead,” I said, “I found his office had been ransacked. As you know. The next day I discovered that Greville had bought diamonds. I began looking for them, but there was no paperwork, no address book, no desk diary, no reference to or appointments with diamond dealers. I couldn’t physically find the diamonds either. I spent three days searching in the vault, with Annette and June, her assistant, telling me that there never were any diamonds in the office, Greville was far too security conscious. You yourself told me the diamonds were intended for you, which I didn’t know until I came here. Everyone in the office knew I was looking for diamonds, and at that point Jason must have told you I was looking for them, which informed you that I didn’t know where they were.”

He watched my face with his mouth slightly open, no longer denying, showing only the stunned disbelief of the profoundly found out.

“The office staff grew to know I was a jockey,” I said, “and Jason behaved to me with an insolence I thought inappropriate, but I now think his arrogance was the result of his having had me facedown on the ground under his foot. He couldn’t crow about that, but his belief in his superiority was stamped all over him. I asked the office staff not to unsettle the customers by telling them that they were now trading with a jockey, not a gemologist, but I think it’s certain that Jason told you .”

“What makes you think that?” He didn’t say it hadn’t happened.

“You couldn’t get into Greville’s house to search it,” I said, “because it’s a fortress. You couldn’t swing any sort of wrecking ball against the windows because the grilles inside made it pointless, and anyway they’re wired on a direct alarm to the police station. The only way to get into the house is by key, and I had the keys. So you worked out how to get me there, and you set it up through the trainer I ride for, which is how I know you were aware I was a jockey. Apart from the staff, no one else who knew I was a jockey knew I was looking for diamonds, because I carefully didn’t tell them. Come to the telephone in Greville’s house for information about the diamonds, you said, and I obediently turned up, which was foolish.”

“But I never went to Greville’s house...” he said.

“No, not you, Jason. Strong and fast in the motorcycle helmet which covered his orange hair, butting me over again just like old times. I saw him vault the gate on the way out. That couldn’t have been you. He turned the house upside down but the police didn’t think he’d found what he was looking for, and I’m sure he didn’t.”

“Why not?” he asked, and then said, “That’s to say...”

“Did you mean Jason to kill me?” I asked flatly.

“No! Of course not!” The idea seemed genuinely to shock him.

“He could have done,” I said.

“I’m not a murderer!” His indignation, as far as I could tell, was true and without reservation, quite different to his reaction to my calling him a thief.

“What were you doing two days ago, on Sunday afternoon?” I said.

“What?” He was bewildered by the question but not alarmed.

“Sunday afternoon,” I said.

“What about Sunday afternoon? What are you talking about?”

I frowned. “Never mind. Go back to Saturday night. To Jason giving me a concussion with half a brick.”

The knowledge of that was plain to read. We were again on familiar territory.