Felix Francis: Dick Francis's Gamble

“This in the paper,” I said. “They’re suggesting that Herb was a criminal and probably deserved to be killed.”

“And was he?” Claudia asked, turning around.

“Of course not,” I said firmly.

“How do you know?” she asked, echoing the detective inspector.

“I just do,” I said. “I worked at the next desk to him for the past five years. Don’t you think I’d have noticed if he was a criminal?”

“Not necessarily,” Claudia said. “Do you think those who worked next to Bernie Madoff realized he was a crook? And how about that doctor, Harold Shipman? He murdered two hundred of his patients over more than twenty years before anyone suspected him.”

She was right. She usually was.

I had met Claudia during my second year at the LSE. We actually met on the London Underground, the Tube, an environment not usually renowned for introducing strangers. That particular evening, nearly six years ago, I had been going into college for an evening event and I was sitting next to Claudia when the train came to a halt in the tunnel. Twenty minutes later the driver came through the train explaining that there was a signal problem at Euston due to an electrical fire. Another twenty minutes after that we moved slowly forward to Kentish Town, where everybody was required to leave the train.

I never did get to the evening event at the LSE.

Claudia and I went to a pub for supper instead. But it was not a romantic liaison, it was strictly business. I was finding life as a student far more expensive than I had budgeted for, and Claudia was in need of digs close to the Byam Shaw School of Art, where she was studying.

By the end of the evening we had a deal. She would move into the guest bedroom in my house as a lodger and pay a contribution towards the mortgage.

By the end of the same month she had moved out of the guest room and into mine as full-time girlfriend, while she still went on renting the guest room as her studio.

The arrangement still existed although, since our student days, the rent she paid had decreased steadily to nothing as my earnings had risen and hers had remained stubbornly static at zero.

“Making your mark as an artist is not about commercial sales,” she would wail whenever I teased her about it. “It’s all to do with creativity.”

And creative she was, there was no doubt about that. Sometimes I just wished that others would appreciate her creations enough to write out a check. As it was, the third bedroom of the house had so many finished canvases stacked against the walls there was no longer space for a bed.

“One day,” she would say, “these will all sell for tens of thousands, and I’ll be rich.” But the main problem was that she didn’t actually want to part with any of them so she didn’t even try to sell them. It was as if she painted them solely for her own benefit. And they were definitely an acquired taste-one I would call dark and foreboding, full of surreal, disturbing images of pain and distress.

With the exception of a small life study in pencil, drawn during her Byam Shaw days, none of her work was hung on our walls, and that was because I found them impossible to live with.

And yet, surprisingly, I was able to live happily with the artist.

For a long while I had worried about her state of mind but it was as if Claudia placed all her dark thoughts into her paintings, and there they stayed, leaving her to exist outside her work in a world of brightness and color.

She herself had no real explanation for why she painted as she did and denied that it was due to the sudden death of her parents when she’d been a child. She said it was just how things turned out when her brushes stroked the canvas.

I had often thought of taking a selection of her weirdest paintings to be seen by an analyst to see if there might be some sort of psychological disturbance present, but I hadn’t liked to do so without her consent and I’d been too apprehensive to ask in case she had objected.

So I had done nothing. I had always tried to avoid personal confrontation, not least because I had grown up with it all around me from my parents, who had fought each other tooth and nail for more than thirty years until they had finally divorced in their late fifties.

“But it says here,” I said to Claudia, pointing at the newspaper, “that the murder had all the characteristics of a gangland killing. Now, surely I would have known if Herb had been involved in that sort of thing.”

“I bet my friends have all sorts of skeletons in their cupboards we’ll never hear about.”

“You’re such a cynic,” I said, but she did have some strange friends.

“A realist,” she replied. “It saves being disappointed.”

“Disappointed?”

“Yes,” she said. “If I believe the worst of people, then I’m not disappointed when it turns out to be accurate.”

“And do you believe the worst of me?”

“Don’t be silly,” she said, coming over and stroking my hair with flour-covered hands. “I know the worst of you.”

“And are you disappointed?”

“Always!” She laughed.

But I began to wonder if it was true.

Iarrived at the offices of Lyall & Black on the fourth floor of 64 Lombard Street at eight-fifteen a.m. on Monday morning to find the door blocked by a burly-looking police constable in full uniform complete with anti-stab vest and helmet.

“Sorry, sir,” he said in an official tone as I tried to push past him, “no one is allowed into these offices without permission from my superior officer.”

“But I work here,” I said.

“Your name, sir?” he asked.

“Nicholas Foxton.”

He consulted a list that he had removed from his trouser pocket.

“Mr. N. Foxton,” he read. “Very well, sir, you may go in.” He moved slightly to one side while I passed, but then he stepped quickly back into his former spot as if expecting to prevent a rush from those not on his list.

The offices of Lyall & Black had never seen such activity so early on a Monday morning.

Both the senior partners, Patrick Lyall and Gregory Black, were in the client waiting area leaning on the chest-high reception desk.

“Oh hi, Nicholas,” said Patrick as I entered. “The police are here.”

“So I see,” I said. “Is it to do with Herb?”

They nodded.

“We’ve both been here since seven,” Patrick said. “But they won’t let us along into our offices. We’ve been told not to go beyond here.”

“Have they said what they are looking for, exactly?” I asked.

“No,” Gregory said sharply with irritation. “I presume they are hoping to find some clue as to who killed him. But I’m not happy about it. There may be sensitive client material on his desk that I wouldn’t want them to see. It’s highly confidential.”

I thought it was unlikely that the police would accept that anything was in the least bit confidential if it could have a bearing on unmasking a murderer.

“When did you find out he was dead?” I asked them. I knew that Herb’s name had finally been included in the late news on Sunday evening.

“Yesterday afternoon,” said Patrick. “I received a call from the police asking us to meet them here this morning. How about you?”

“I did try and call you on Saturday, but there was no reply,” I said. “I was actually with Herb when he was shot.”

“My God,” said Patrick, “that’s right. You were going to the races together.”

“And I was standing right next to him when he was killed,” I said.

“How awful,” Patrick said. “Did you see who killed him?”

“Well, sort of,” I said. “But I was looking mostly at his gun.”

“I just don’t understand it.” Patrick shook his head. “Why would anyone want to kill Herb Kovak?”