Rat Race Part 23

'My dear chap... I will.'

I walked down the steps from his front door towards Honey's Mini waiting in the drive, and looked back to where he stood in the yellow oblong of light. He waved a hand gently and slowly closed the door, and I saw from his benign slightly puzzled expression that he was still not quite sure why I had come.

It was after one o'clock when I got back to the caravan. Tired, hungry, miserable about Nancy, I still couldn't stay asleep. Three o'clock, I was awake again, tangling the sheets as if in fever. I got up and splashed my itching eyes with cold water: lay down, got up, went for a walk across the airfield. The cool starry night came through my shirt and quietened my skin but didn't do much for the hopeless ache between my ears.

At eight in the morning I went to fetch Honey, filling her tank with the promised petrol at the nearest garage. She had made a gallon or two on the deal, I calculated. Fair enough.

What was not fair enough, however, was the news with which she greeted me.

'Colin Ross wants you to ring him up. He rang yesterday evening about half an hour after you'd buzzed off.'

'Did he say... what about?'

'He did ask me to write you a message, but honestly, I forgot. I was up in the tower until nine, and then Uncle was impatient to get home, and I just went off with him and forgot all about coming down here with the message... and anyway, what difference would a few hours make?'

'What was the message?'

'He said to tell you his sister didn't meet anyone called Chanter at Liverpool. Something about a strike, and this Chanter not being there. I don't know... there were two aircraft in the circuit and I wasn't paying all that much attention. Come to think of it, he did seem pretty anxious I should give you the message last night, but like I said, I forgot. Sorry, and all that. Was it important?'

I took a deep breath. Thinking about the past night, I could cheerfully have strangled her. 'Thanks for telling me.'

She gave me a sharp glance. 'You look bushed. Have you been making love all night? You don't look fit to fly.'

'Seldom felt better,' I said with truth. 'And no, I haven't.'

'Save yourself for me,'

'Don't bank on it.'

'Louse.'

When I rang Colin's number from the telephone in the lounge it was Midge who answered. The relief in her voice was as overwhelming as my own.

'Matt...!' I could hear her gulp, and knew she was fighting against tears. 'Oh, Matt... I'm so glad you've rung. She didn't go after Chanter. She didn't. It's all right. Oh dear... just a minute...' She sniffed and paused, and when she spoke again she had her voice under control. 'She rang yesterday evening and we talked to her for a long time. She said she was sorry if she had upset us, she had really left because she was so angry with herself, so humiliated at having made up such silly dreams about you... she said it was all her own fault, that you hadn't deceived her in any way, she had deceived herself... she wanted to tell us that it wasn't because she was angry with you that she ran out, but because she felt she had made such a fool of herself.... Anyway, she said she had cooled off a good deal by the time her train got to Liverpool and she was simply miserable by then, and then when she found Chanter had gone away because of the strike she said she was relieved, really. Chanter's landlady told Nancy where he had gone... somewhere in Manchester, to do a painting of industrial chimneys, she thought... but Nancy decided it wasn't Chanter she wanted... and she didn't know what to do, she still felt muddled... and then outside the art school she met a girl who had been a student with us in London. She was setting off for a camping holiday near Stratford and... well... Nancy decided to go with her. She said a few days' peace and some landscape painting would put her right... so she rang up here and it was our cleaning woman who answered... Nancy swears she told her it was Jill she was with, and not Chanter, but of course we never got that part of the message...' She stopped, and when I didn't answer immediately she said anxiously, 'Matt, are you still there?'

'Yes.'

'You were so quiet.'

'I was thinking about the last four days.'

Four wretched, dragging days. Four endless grinding nights. All unnecessary. She hadn't been with Chanter at all. If she'd suffered about what she'd imagined about me, so had I from what I'd imagined about her. Which made us, I guessed, about quits.

'Colin told her she should have asked you about that court case instead of jumping to conclusions,' Midge said.

'She didn't jump, she was pushed.'

'Yes. She knows that now. She's pretty upset. She doesn't really want to face you at Warwick... after making such a mess of things...'

'I shan't actually slaughter her.'

She half laughed. 'I'll defend her. I'm driving over with Colin. I'll see you there too.'

'That's marvellous.'

'Colin's out on the gallops just now. We're setting off after he's come in and had something to eat.'

'Tell him to drive carefully. Tell him to think of Ambrose.'

'Yes.... Isn't it awful about that crash?'

'Have you heard what happened, exactly?'

'Apparently Ambrose tried to pa.s.s a slow lorry on a bend and there was another one coming the other way... he ran into it head on and one of the lorries overturned and crushed another car with three stable lads in it. There's quite a lot about it in today's Sporting Life Sporting Life.'

'I expect I'll see it. And Midge... thank Colin for his message last night.'

'I will. He said he didn't want you to worry any longer. He seemed to think you were almost as worried about her as we were.'

'Almost,' I agreed wryly. 'See you at Warwick.'

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

Honey had arranged for me to fly a Mr and Mrs Whiteknight and their two young daughters down to Lydd, where the daughters were to meet friends and leave on the car air ferry to Le Touquet for a holiday in France. After waving the daughters off, the Whiteknights wanted to belt back to see their horse run in the first race at Warwick, which meant, since there was no racecourse strip, landing at Coventry and hailing a cab.

Accordingly I loaded them up at Buckingham and pointed tie nose of the Six towards Kent. The two daughters, about fourteen and sixteen, were world-weary and disagreeable, looking down their noses at everything with ingrained hostility. Their mother behaved to me with the cool graciousness of condescension, and autocratically bossed the family. Mr Whiteknight, gruff, unconsulted, a downtrodden universal provider, out of habit brought up the rear.

At Lydd, after carrying the daughters' suitcases unthanked into the terminal, I went back to the Six to wait through the farewells. Mr Whiteknight had obligingly left his Sporting Life Sporting Life oa his seat. I picked it up and read it. There was a photograph of the Ambrose crash. The usual mangled metal, pushed to the side of the road, pathetic result of impatience. oa his seat. I picked it up and read it. There was a photograph of the Ambrose crash. The usual mangled metal, pushed to the side of the road, pathetic result of impatience.

I turned to the middle page, to see how many races Colin was riding at Warwick. He was down for five, and in most of them was favourite.

Alongside the Warwick programme, there was an advertis.e.m.e.nt in bold black letters.

'Colin Ross has insured with us. Why don't you?' Underneath in smaller type it went on, 'You may not be lucky enough to survive two narrow escapes. Don't chance it. Cut out the proposal form printed below and send it with five pounds to the Racegoers' Accident Fund, Avon Street, Warwick. Your insurance cover starts from the moment your letter is in the post.' may not be lucky enough to survive two narrow escapes. Don't chance it. Cut out the proposal form printed below and send it with five pounds to the Racegoers' Accident Fund, Avon Street, Warwick. Your insurance cover starts from the moment your letter is in the post.'

I put the paper down on my knee, looked into s.p.a.ce, and sucked my teeth.

Major Tyderman had told Annie Villars that he and a partner of his had something going for them that would make them rich. She had thought he meant control of Rudiments, but of course it hadn't been that. The manoeuvring with Rudiments had come about simply because Tyderman couldn't resist a small swindle on the side, even when he was engaged in a bigger one.

Tyderman had got Annie to introduce him to the Duke so that he in his turn could produce Carthy-Todd. Goldenberg was incidental, needed only for placing bets. Carthy-Todd was central, the moving mind, the instigator. Everyone else, Tyderman, the Duke, Colin, Annie, myself, all of us were pieces on his chess-board, to be shoved around until the game was won.

Clean up and clear out, that was how he must have decided to play. He hadn't waited for the Fund to grow slowly and naturally, he'd blown up an aeroplane and used Colin Ross for publicity. He would only have stayed anyway until the claims began mounting, and if the crash victims at Newmarket were in fact insured he would be off within the week. He would stay just long enough to collect the crash-inspired rush of new premiums, and that would be that. A quick transfer to a Swiss bank. A one-way ticket to the next happy hunting ground.

I didn't know how to stop him. There would be no proof that he meant to defraud until after he'd done it. I could produce nothing to back up my belief. No one was going to lurch into drastic action on what was little more than a guess. I could perhaps telephone to the Board of Trade... but the Board of Trade and I were hardly on speaking terms. The tall man might listen. He had, after all, once asked for my thoughts. Maybe the aircraft section had a hotline to the insurance section. And maybe not.

With a sigh I folded up Mr Whiteknight's newspaper and glanced again at the crash on the front page. Down in one corner in the left hand column, beside the account of the accident, a paragraph heading caught my eye.

Tyderman, it said. I read the dry meagre lines underneath with a vague and then mounting feeling of alarm.

'A man believed to be Major Rupert Tyderman was found dead early yesterday beside the main London to South Wales railway line, between Swindon and Bristol. His death, at first attributed to a fall from a train, was later established as having been the result of a stab wound. The police, who had wanted to interview Major Tyderman, are making enquiries.'

The Whiteknight parents were walking back across the ap.r.o.n by the time I'd decided what to do. They were displeased when I met them and said I was going to make a telephone call. There wasn't time, they said.

'Check on the weather,' I lied. They looked up at the hazy heat-wave sky and gave me deservedly bitter looks. All the same, I went on my way.

The Duke's polite manservant answered.

'No, Mr Sh.o.r.e, I'm very sorry, His Grace left for Warwick half an hour ago.'

'Was young Matthew with him?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Do you know if he was planning to go to the Accident Fund office before he went to the racecourse?'

'I believe so, sir. Yes.'

I put the receiver down, feeling increasingly fearful. Rupert Tyderman's death put the game into a different league. Lives had been at risk before, in the aeroplanes; the basic callousness was there; but on those occasions the intention had been expressly not to kill. But now, if Carthy-Todd had decided to clear up behind him... if Tyderman's blunder with Nancy's aeroplane, which had led to his uncovering, had also led directly to his death... if Carthy-Todd had stopped Tyderman giving evidence against him... then would he, could he possibly, also kill the simple, honest, truth-spilling Duke...?

He wouldn't, I thought coldly. He couldn't.

I didn't convince myself one little bit.

The Whiteknights had no cause for complaint about the speed at which I took them to Coventry, though they consented only with bad grace when I asked to share their taxi to the races. I parted from them at the main gate and walked back towards the town centre, looking for the office of the Accident Fund. As the Duke had said, it wasn't far: less than a quarter of a mile.

It was located on the first floor of a small moderately well kept town house which fronted straight on to the pavement. The ground floor seemed to be uninhabited, but the main door stood open and a placard on the wall just inside announced 'Racegoers' Accident Fund. Please walk up.'

I walked up. On the first landing there was a wash room, a secretary's office, and, at the front of the house, a door with a yale lock and a knocker in the shape of a horse's head. I flipped the knocker a couple of times and the door came abruptly open.

'h.e.l.lo,' said young Matthew, swinging it wide. 'Uncle was just saying you would miss us. We're just going along to the races.'

'Come along in, my dear chap,' said the Duke's voice from inside the room.

I stepped into the office. At first sight a plushy one: wall to wall plum coloured carpet, but of penny-pinching quality, two fat looking easy chairs with cheap foam seats, a pair of shoulder high metal filing cabinets and a modern afrormosia desk. The atmosphere of a solid, sober, long established business came exclusively from the good proportions of the bay windowed room, the mouldings round the nineteenth century ceiling, the carved wood and marble slab of the handsome fireplace, and some dark old gilt framed oils on the walls. The office had been chosen with genius to convince, to rea.s.sure, to charm. And as clients of insurance companies seldom if ever visited its office, this one must have been designed to convince, to rea.s.sure, to charm only the Duke himself.

The Duke introduced me to the man who had been sitting and who now stood behind the desk.

'Charles Carthy-Todd... Matthew Sh.o.r.e.'

I shook his hand. He'd seen me before, as I'd seen him. Neither of us gave the slightest sign of it. I hoped he had not distinguished in me the minute subsidence of tension which I saw in him. The tension I felt hadn't subsided in the slightest.

He was all the Duke had said: a man with good presence, good voice, a thorough-going public school gent. He would have had to have been, to net the Duke; and there were all those silver framed photographs, which the Duke had mentioned, standing around to prove it.

He had dark hair with the merest sprinkling of grey, a compact little moustache, pinkish tan slightly oily-looking skin, and heavy black-framed gla.s.ses a.s.sisting his greyish blue eyes.

The Duke was sitting comfortably in an armchair in the bay window, his splendid head haloed by the shining day behind. His knees were crossed, his hands relaxed, and he was smoking a cigar. From his general air of pleased well-being, it was easy to see the pride he held in his beautiful benevolent fund. I wished sincerely for his sake that he wasn't going to have to wake up.

Charles Carthy-Todd sat down and continued with what he had been going to do when I arrived, offering young Matthew a piece of chocolate-covered orange peel from a half empty round red and gold tin. Matthew took it, thanked him, ate it, and watched him with anxious reserve. Like the Duke, I trusted young Matthew's instinct. All too clearly, it had switched to amber, if not to red. I hoped for all our sakes that he would have the good manners to keep quiet.

'Give Matthew a proposal form, Charles,' the Duke said contentedly. 'That's what he's come for, you know, to join the Fund.'

Carthy-Todd obediently rose, crossed to the filing cabinet, pulled open the top drawer, and lifted out two separate sheets of paper. One, it appeared, was the proposal form: the other, a lavishly curlicued certificate of insurance. I filled in the s.p.a.ces on the ultra-simple proposal while Carthy-Todd inscribed my name and a number on the certificate; then I handed over a fiver, which left me with enough to live on cornflakes until pay day, and the transaction was complete.

'Take care of yourself now, Matt,' joked the Duke, and I smiled and said I would.

The Duke looked at his watch. 'Good gracious!' He stood up. 'Come along now, everybody. Time we went along to the racecourse. And no more excuses, Charles, I insist on you lunching with me.' To me he explained, 'Charles very rarely goes to the races. He doesn't much care for it, do you see? But as the course is so very close...'

Carthy-Todd's aversion to race meetings was to my mind completely understandable. He wished to remain unseen, anonymous, unrecognisable, just as he'd been all along. Charles would choose which meetings he went to very carefully indeed. He would never, I imagined, turn up without checking with the Duke whether he was going to be there too.

We walked back to the racecourse, the Duke and Carthy-Todd in front, young Matthew and me behind. Young Matthew slowed down a little and said to me in a quiet voice, 'I say, Matt, have you noticed something strange about Mr Carthy-Todd?'

I glanced at his face. He was half anxious, half puzzled, wanting rea.s.surance.

'What do you think is strange?'

'I've never seen anyone before with eyes like that.'

Children were incredibly observant. Matthew had seen naturally what I had known to look for.

'I shouldn't mention it to him. He might not care for it.'

'I suppose not.' He paused. 'I don't frightfully like him.'

'I can see that.'

'Do you?'

'No,' I said.

He nodded in satisfaction. 'I didn't think you would. I don't know why Uncle's so keen on him. Uncle,' he added dispa.s.sionately, 'doesn't understand about people. He thinks everyone is as nice as he is. Which they're not.'

'How soon can you become his business manager?'

He laughed. 'I know all about trustees. I've got them. Can't have this and can't do that, that's all they ever say, Mother says.'

'Does your Uncle have trustees?'

'No, he hasn't. Mother's always beefing on about Uncle not being fit to control all that lucre and one day he'll invest the lot in a South Sea Bubble. I asked Uncle about it and he just laughed. He told me he has a stockbroker who sees to everything and Uncle just goes on getting richer and when he wants some money for something he just tells the stockbroker and he sells some shares and sends it along. Simple. Mother fusses over nothing. Uncle won't get into much trouble about money because he knows that he doesn't know about it, if you see what I mean?'

'I wouldn't like him to give too much to Mr Carthy-Todd,' I said.

He gave me a flashing look of understanding. 'So that's what I felt.... Do you think it would do any good if I sort of tried to put Uncle off him a bit?'