Дик Фрэнсис - Decider

‘You’re doing well.’

‘He frightened me rigid, Dad. We all wanted to be out of there. Then Alan darted past him suddenly and then Edward, and I did too, and he yelled at us and ran about to stop us and we dodged him and ran, I mean, pelted , Dad... and then Toby didn’t come out after us, and Neil started screaming... and that’s when you came.’

I stopped the car beside Roger’s jeep. Keith’s Jaguar stood beyond, and beyond that, a police car.

‘And he didn’t say anything else?’ I asked.

‘No, only something about not being blackmailed by you . I mean, it was silly, you wouldn’t blackmail anyone.’

I smiled inwardly at his faith. Blackmail wasn’t necessarily for money.

‘No,’ I said. ‘All the same, don’t repeat that bit, OK?’

‘No, Dad, OK.’

Feeling curiously lightheaded, I walked across to the office with Christopher and told the police, when they asked, that I had no idea why Keith Stratton had behaved as irrationally as he had.

It was Friday before I left Stratton Park.

All Wednesday afternoon I replied ‘I don’t know’ to relays of police questions, and agreed that I would return dutifully for an inquest.

I said nothing about rushing at Keith to overbalance him. It didn’t sound sensible. I said nothing about Neil.

When asked, I said I hadn’t used a fire extinguisher to try to save Keith’s life, because I couldn’t find one.

‘Four of them were lying out of sight in the bar area,’ Roger told me.

‘Who put them there?’ the police asked.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

Christopher told the law that Keith was a ‘nutter’. They listened politely enough and decided he was too young to be called as an inquest witness, as he had anyway not himself been present at the moment of the accident.

The Press came; took photographs; asked questions, got the same answers.

A policewoman, in my presence, asked the younger boys later, down at the Gardners, what they’d seen, but in the manner of children with questioning strangers they clammed up into big-eyed silence, volunteering nothing and answering mainly in nods. Yes — nod — there had been fires in the tent. Yes — nod — Keith Stratton had lit them. Yes — nod — Toby’s hair had got singed. Yes — nod — Christopher had turned on the sprinkler, and yes — nod — their father had looked after them.

The Strattons, I thought ironically at one point, had nothing on the Morris family when it came to keeping things quiet.

On Thursday the clips came out of my mostly-healed cuts and, with Dart chauffeuring, I took Toby to Swindon to see what Penelope could do with his unevenly burned hair.

I watched her laugh with him and tease him. Watched her wash the still lingering singe smell out, and cut and brush and blow-dry the very short remaining brown curls. Watched her give him confidence in his new appearance and light up his smile.

I spent the whole time wondering where and how I could get her into bed.

Perdita came downstairs behaving like a mother hen defending her chick against predators, as if reading my mind.

‘I told you too much, dear, on Tuesday,’ she said a shade anxiously.

‘I won’t give you away.’

‘And Keith Stratton is dead!’

‘So sad,’ I agreed.

She laughed. ‘You’re a rogue. Did you kill him?’

‘In a way.’ With help from my twelve-year-old, I thought, whether he realised it or not. ‘Self-defence, you might say.’

Her eyes smiled, but her voice was sober. She used only one word for an opinion. ‘ Good .’

Penelope finished the twelve-year-old’s hair. I paid her. She thanked me. She had no idea what I felt for her, nor gave any flicker of response. I was six boys’ father, almost double her age. Perdita, seeing all, patted my shoulder. I kissed the cheek of the mother and still lusted for the daughter, and walked away, with Toby, feeling empty and old.

Dart returned Toby to his brothers at the Gardners and willingly took me on to see Marjorie.

The manservant, aplomb in place, let us in and announced us. Marjorie sat, as before, in her commanding armchair. The smashed looking glass had been removed, the torn chairs were missing. Rebecca’s shot at me had left no permanent traces.

‘I came to say goodbye,’ I said.

‘But you’ll come back to Stratton Park.’

‘Probably not.’

‘But we need you!’

I shook my head. ‘You have a great racecourse manager in Colonel Gardner. You’ll have record crowds at the next meeting, with Oliver Wells’s flair for publicity. You’ll commission superb new stands — and what I will do, if you like, is make sure any firms submitting proposals to you are substantial and trustworthy. And beyond that, as regards your family, you have more power than ever to hold things together. You don’t have Keith, so you don’t need any way of restraining him. You have control of Rebecca, who aimed — probably still aims — to run the racecourse herself. She has probably done herself in there, as, even after you’re gone, Conrad and Dart can both hold blackmail and attempted murder over her head, enough to out-vote her at Board meetings.’

Marjorie listened and came up with her own sort of solution.

‘I want you,’ she said, ‘to be a director. Conrad and Ivan and I will vote for it. Unanimous decision of the Board.’

‘Hear, hear,’ Dart said, delighted.

‘You don’t need me,’ I protested.

‘Yes, we do.’

I wanted to disentangle myself from the Strattons. I did not want to step in any way into my non-grandfather’s shoes. From beyond the grave his influence and way of doing things had sucked me into a web of duplicity, and three times in a week his family had nearly cost me my life. I’d paid my debt to him, I thought. I needed now to be free.

And yet...

‘I’ll think about it,’ I said.

Marjorie nodded, satisfied. ‘With you in charge,’ she said, ‘the racecourse will prosper.’

‘I have to talk to Conrad,’ I said.

He was alone in his holy of holies, sitting behind his desk.

I’d left Dart again outside in his car, reading about hair-loss, though not acting as look-out this time.

‘With this American system,’ he said, deep in before-and-after photographs, ‘I would never worry again. You can go swimming — diving — your new hair is part of you. But I’d have to go to America every six weeks to two months to keep it right.’

‘You can afford it,’ I said.

‘Yes, but...’

‘Go for it,’ I said.

He needed encouragement. ‘Do you really think I should?’

‘I think you should book your first ticket at once.’

‘Yes. Yes . Well, yes, I will .’

Conrad stood up when I went in. His cupboard door was closed, but boxes stood higgledy-piggledy on his carpet, their contents stirred up.

He didn’t offer his hand. He seemed to feel awkward, as I did myself.

‘Marjorie telephoned,’ he said. ‘She says she wants you on the Board. She says I’m to persuade you.’

‘It’s your own wishes that matter.’

‘I don’t know...’

‘No. Well, I didn’t come to talk about that. I came to return what I stole from you yesterday.’

‘Only yesterday! So much has happened.’

I put on his desk the outer brown envelope marked ‘Conrad’. He picked it up, looking at the sticky-tape closure.

‘Like I told you,’ I said, ‘I did look inside. Keith knew I would look. I don’t think he could bear the thought of my using what I learned. I confess that I’m glad I don’t have to, as he’s dead, but I would have done, and you’d better know that. But I’ll not tell Marjorie what’s in there — it’s evident she doesn’t know — and I’ll never tell anyone else.’