Dick Francis - Straight

Annette, nevertheless troubled, said, “Surely you yourself will need Mr. Franklin’s salary.”

I shook my head. “I earn enough riding horses. Until we’re solvent here, we need to save every penny.”

“It’s an adventure!” June said, enraptured.

I thought it might be a very long haul and even in the end impossible, but I couldn’t square it with the consciousness of Greville all around me not to try.

“Well,” I said, putting a hand in a pocket and bringing out a twist of gauze, “we have here five uncut diamonds which cost about seventy-five thousand dollars altogether.”

They more or less gasped.

“How do we sell them?” I said.

After a pause, Annette said, “Interest a diamantaire.”

“Do you know how to do that?”

After another moment’s hesitation, she nodded.

“We can give provenance,” I said. “Copies of the records of the original sale are on their way here from Guy Servi in Antwerp. They might be here tomorrow. Sight-box number and so on. We’ll put those stones in the vault until the papers arrive, then you can get cracking.”

She nodded, but fearfully.

“Cheer up,” I said. “It’s clear from the ledgers that Saxony Franklin is normally a highly successful and profitable business. We’ll have to cut costs where we can, that’s all.”

“We could cut out Jason’s salary,” Annette said unexpectedly. “Half the time Tina’s been carrying the heavy boxes, anyway, and I can do the vacuuming myself.”

“Great,” I said with gratitude. “If you feel like that, we’ll succeed.”

The telephone rang and Annette answered it briefly.

“A messenger has left a packet for you down at the front desk,” she said.

“I’ll go for it,” June said, and was out of the door on the words, returning in her usual short time with a brown padded Jiffy bag, not very large, addressed simply to Derek Franklin in neat handwriting, which she laid before me with a flourish.

“Mind it’s not a bomb,” she said facetiously as I picked it up, and I thought with an amount of horror that it was a possibility I hadn’t thought of.

“I didn’t mean it,” she said teasingly, seeing me hesitate. “Do you want me to open it?”

“And get your hands blown off instead?”

“Of course it’s not a bomb,” Annette said uneasily.

“Tell you what,” June said, “I’ll fetch the shears from the packing room.” She was gone for a few seconds. “Alfie says,” she remarked, returning, “we ought to put it in a bucket of water.”

She gave me the shears, which were oversized scissors that Alfie used for cutting cardboard, and for all her disbelief she and Annette backed away across the room while I sliced the end of the bag.

There was no explosion. Complete anticlimax. I shook out the contents which proved to be two objects and one envelope.

One of the objects was the microcassette recorder that I’d left on Prospero Jenks’s workbench in my haste to be gone.

The other was a long black leather wallet almost the size of the Wizard, with gold initials G.S.F. in one corner and an ordinary brown rubber band holding it shut.

“That’s Mr. Franklin’s,” Annette said blankly, and June, coming to inspect it, nodded.

I peeled off the rubber band and laid the wallet open on the desk. There was a business card lying loose inside it with Prospero Jenks’s name and shops on the front, and on the reverse the single word, “Sorry.”

“Where did he get Mr. Franklin’s wallet from?” Annette asked, puzzled, looking at the card.

“He found it,” I said.

“He took his time sending it back,” June said tartly.

“Mm.”

The wallet contained a Saxony Franklin checkbook, four credit cards, several business cards and a small pack of banknotes, which I guessed were fewer in number than when Greville set out.

The small excitement over, Annette and June went off to tell the others the present and future state of the nation, and I was alone when I opened the envelope.

Pross had sent me a letter and a certified bank draft: instantly cashable money.

I blinked at the numbers on the check and reread them very carefully. Then I read the letter.

It said:

Derek,

This is a plea for a bargain, as you more or less said. The check is for the sum I agreed with Grev for the twelve teardrops and eight stars. I know you need the money, and I need those stones.

Jason won’t be troubling you again. I’m giving him a job in one of my workrooms.

Grev wouldn’t have forgiven the brick, though he might the wallet. For you it’s the other way round. You’re very like him. I wish he hadn’t died.

What a mess, I thought. I did need the money, yet if I accepted it I was implicitly agreeing not to take any action against him. The trouble about taking action against him was that however much I might want to I didn’t know that I could. Apart from difficulties of evidence, I had more or less made a bargain that for information he would get inaction, but that had been before the wallet. It was perceptive of him, I thought, to see that it was betrayal and attacks on our brother that would anger both Greville and me most.

Would Greville want me to extend, if not forgiveness, then at least suspended revenge? Would Greville want me to confirm his forgiveness or to rise up in wrath and tear up the check...

In the midst of these somber squirreling thoughts the telephone rang and I answered it.

“Elliot Trelawney here,” the voice said.

“Oh, hello.”

He asked me how things were going and I said life was full of dilemmas. Ever so, he said with a chuckle.

“Give me some advice.” I said on impulse, “As a magistrate.”

“If I can, certainly.”

“Well. Listen to a story, then say what you think.”

“Fire away.”

“Someone knocked me out with a brick...” Elliot made protesting noises on my behalf, but I went on, “I know now who it was, but I didn’t then, and I didn’t see his face because he was masked. He wanted to steal a particular thing from me, but although he made a mess in the house searching, he didn’t find it, and so didn’t rob me of anything except consciousness. I guessed later who it was, and I challenged another man with having sent him to attack me. That man didn’t deny it to me, but he said he would deny it to anyone else. So... what do I do?”

“Whew.” He pondered. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I need the advice.”

“Did you report the attack to the police at the time?”

“Yes.”

“Have you suffered serious aftereffects?”

“No.”

“Did you see a doctor?”

“No.”

He pondered some more. “On a practical level you’d find it difficult to get a conviction, even if the prosecution service would bring charges of actual bodily harm. You couldn’t swear to the identity of your assailant if you didn’t see him at the time, and as for the other man, conspiracy to commit a crime is one of the most difficult charges to make stick. As you didn’t consult a doctor, you’re on tricky ground. So, hard as it may seem, my advice would be that the case wouldn’t get to court.”

I sighed. “Thank you,” I said.

“Sorry not to have been more positive.”

“It’s all right. You confirmed what I rather feared.”

“Fine then,” he said. “I rang to thank you for sending the Vaccaro notes. We held the committee meeting and turned down Vaccaro’s application, and now we find we needn’t have bothered because on Saturday night he was arrested and charged with attempting to import illegal substances. He’s still in custody, and America is asking for him to be extradited to Florida where he faces murder charges and perhaps execution. And we nearly gave him a gambling license! Funny old world.”