Дик Фрэнсис - Reflex

‘Well?’ he said.

‘All right.’

‘Find her together?’

‘Yes.’

He was visibly pleased. ‘That’s great.’

I wasn’t so sure; but it was settled.

‘Can you go this evening?’ He said. ‘I’ll telephone and tell her you’re coming.’ He plunged lankily towards the public telephone box and disappeared inside with his eyes switched anxiously my way, watching all through his call to make sure I didn’t go back on my decision and scram.

The call, however, gave him no joy.

‘Blast,’ he said, rejoining me. ‘I spoke to a nurse. Mrs Nore had a bad day and they’ve given her an injection. She’s asleep. No visitors. Ring tomorrow.’

I felt a distinct sense of relief, which he noticed.

‘It’s all very well for you,’ I said. ‘But how would you like to be on the verge of finding out that you owe your existence to a quickie in the bushes with the milkman?’

‘Is that what you think?’

‘Something like that. It has to be, doesn’t it?’

‘All the same...’ he said doubtfully.

‘All the same,’ I agreed resignedly, ‘one wants to know.’

I set off towards the car park thinking that Jeremy’s errand was concluded, but it appeared not. He came in my wake, but slowly, so that I looked back and waited.

‘About Mrs Nore’s son,’ he said. ‘Her son James.’

‘What about him?’

‘I just thought you might visit him. Find out why he’s been disinherited.’

‘You just thought...’

‘As we’re working together,’ he said hastily.

‘You could go yourself,’ I suggested.

‘Er, no,’ he said. ‘As Mrs Nore’s solicitor, I’d be asking questions I shouldn’t.’

‘And I can just see this James bird answering mine.’

He pulled a card out of his charcoal pocket, ‘I brought his address,’ he said, holding it out. ‘And you’ve promised to help.’

‘A pact is a pact,’ I said, and took the card. ‘But you’re still a bastard.’

James Nore lived in London, and since I was more than half way there I drove straight from the races to the house on Camden Hill. I hoped all the way there that he would be out, but when I’d found the street and the number and pressed the right bell, the door was opened by a man of about forty who agreed that James Nore was his name.

He was astounded, as well he might be, to find an unknown nephew standing unannounced on his mat, but with only a slight hesitation he invited me in, leading the way into a sitting room crammed with Victorian bric-a-brac and vibrant with colour.

‘I thought Caroline had aborted you,’ he said baldly. ‘Mother said the child had been got rid of.’

He was nothing like my memories of his sister. He was plump, soft-muscled and small-mouthed, and had a mournful droop to his eyes. None of her giggly lightness or grace of movement or hectic speed could ever have lived in his flaccid body. I felt ill at ease with him on sight, disliking my errand more by the minute.

He listened with his small lips pouted while I explained about looking for Amanda, and he showed more and more annoyance.

‘The old bag’s been saying for months that she’s going to cut me off,’ he said furiously. ‘Ever since she came here.’ He glanced round the room, but nothing there seemed to me likely to alienate a mother. ‘Everything was all right as long as I went to Northamptonshire now and then. Then she came here. Uninvited. The old bag.’

‘She’s ill now,’ I said.

‘Of course she is.’ He flung out his arms in an exaggerated gesture. ‘I suggest visiting. She says no. Won’t see me. Pigheaded old crone.’

A brass clock on the mantelshelf sweetly chimed the half hour, and I took note that everything there was of fine quality and carefully dusted. James Nore’s bric-a-brac wasn’t just junk but antiques.

‘I’d be a fool to help you find this wretched second by-blow of Caroline’s, wouldn’t I?’ he said. ‘If no one can find her the whole estate reverts to me anyway, will or no will. But I’d have to wait years for it. Years and years. Mother’s just being spiteful.’

‘Why?’ I said mildly.

‘She loved Noel Coward,’ he said resentfully, meaning, by the sound of it, if she loved Noel Coward she should have loved him.

‘The abstract,’ I said, enlightened, ‘isn’t always the same as the particular.’

‘I didn’t want her to come here. It would have saved all this fuss if she hadn’t.’ He shrugged. ‘Are you going now? There’s no point in your staying.’

He began to walk towards the door, but before he reached it it was opened by a man wearing a plastic cooking apron and limply carrying a wooden spoon. He was much younger than James, naturally camp, and unmistakable.

‘Oh, hello, dear,’ he said, seeing me. ‘Are you staying for supper?’

‘He’s just going,’ James said sharply. ‘He’s not... er...’

They both stood back to leave me room to pass, and as I went out into the hall I said to the man in the apron, ‘Did you meet Mrs Nore when she came here?’

‘Sure did, dear,’ he said ruefully, and then caught sight of James shaking his head vigorously at him and meaning shut up. I smiled halfheartedly at a point in the air near their heads, and went to the front door.

‘I wish you bad luck,’ James said. ‘That beastly Caroline, spawning all over the place. I never did like her.’

‘Do you remember her?’

‘Always laughing at me and tripping me up. I was glad when she went.’

I nodded, and opened the door.

‘Wait,’ he said suddenly.

He came towards me along the hall, and I could see he had had an idea that pleased him.

‘Mother would never leave you anything, of course,’ he began.

‘Why not?’ I said.

He frowned. ‘There was a terrible drama, wasn’t there, when Caroline got pregnant? Frightful scenes. Lots of screaming. I remember it... but no one would ever explain. All I do know is that everything changed because of you. Caroline went and Mother turned into a bitter old bag and I had beastly miserable years in that big house with her, before I left. She hated you... the thought of you. Do you know what she called you? “Caroline’s disgusting foetus”, that’s what. Caroline’s disgusting foetus.’

He peered at me expectantly, but in truth I felt nothing. The old woman’s hatred hadn’t troubled me for years.

‘I’ll give you some of the money, though,’ he said, ‘if you can prove that Amanda is dead.’

On Saturday morning Jeremy Folk telephoned.

‘Will you be at home tomorrow?’ he said.

‘Yes, but...’

‘Good. I’ll pop over.’ He put down his receiver without giving me a chance to say I didn’t want him. It was an advance, I supposed, that he’d announced his visit and not simply turned up.

Also on Saturday I ran into Bart Underfield in the post office and in place of our usual unenthusiastic “good mornings” I asked him a question.

‘Where is Elgin Yaxley these days, Bart?’

‘Hong Kong,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘For a holiday?’ I said.

‘Of course not. He lives there.’

‘But he’s over here now, isn’t he?’

‘No, he isn’t. He’d have told me.’

‘But he must be,’ I said insistently.

Bart said irritably, ‘Why must he be? He isn’t. He’s working for a bloodstock agency and they don’t give him much time off. And what’s it to do with you?’

‘I just thought... I saw him.’

‘You couldn’t have. When?’

‘Oh... last week. A week ago yesterday.’

‘Well, you’re wrong,’ Bart said triumphantly. ‘That was the day of George Millace’s funeral, and Elgin sent me a cable...’ He hesitated and his eyes flickered, but he went on, ‘... and the cable came from Hong Kong.’