Rat Race (22 page)

‘Charles sent out a pamphlet urging everyone to insure against bombs on the way home,’ I said.

The Duke smiled. ‘Yes, that’s right. I believe it was very effective. We thought, do you see, that as no one had been hurt, there would be no harm in it.’

‘And as it was Colin Ross who was on board, the bomb incident was extensively covered on television and in the newspapers… and had a greater impact on your Fund than had it been anyone else.’

The Duke’s forehead wrinkled. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

‘Never mind, sir. I was just thinking aloud.’

‘Very easy habit to fall into. Do it myself, you know, all the time.’

Carthy-Todd and Tyderman’s second sabotage, I thought to myself, hadn’t been as good. Certainly by attacking Colin they’d achieved the same impact and national coverage, but I would have thought it was too obviously slanted at one person to have had much universal effect. Could be wrong, though…

‘This has been the most interesting chat,’ said the Duke, ‘But my dear fellow, the evening is passing. What was it that you wanted to see me about?’

‘Er…’ I cleared my throat. ‘Do you know, sir, I’d very much like to meet Mr Carthy-Todd. He sounds a most go-ahead, enterprising man.’

The Duke nodded warmly.

‘Do you know where I could find him?’

‘Tonight, do you mean?’ He was puzzled.

‘No, sir. Tomorrow will do.’

‘I suppose you might find him at our office. He’s sure to be there, because he knows I will be calling in myself. Warwick races, do you see?’

‘The Accident Fund office… is in Warwick?’

‘Of course.’

‘Silly of me,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know.’

The Duke twinkled at me. ‘I see you haven’t joined the Fund.’

‘I’ll join tomorrow. I’ll go to the office. I’ll be at Warwick too, for the races.’

‘Great,’ he said. ‘Great. The office is only a few hundred yards from the racecourse.’ He put two fingers into an inside pocket and brought out a visiting card. ‘There you are, my dear chap. The address. And if you’re there about an hour before the first race, I’ll be there too, and you can meet Charles. You’ll like him, I’m sure of that.’

‘I’ll look forward to it,’ I said. I finished my whisky and stood up. ‘It was kind of you to let me come… and I think your trains are absolutely splendid…’

His face brightened. He escorted me all the way down to the front door, talking about young Matthew and the plans they had for the holidays. Would I fix Matthew’s flight for Thursday, he asked. Thursday was Matthew’s birthday. He would be eleven.

‘Thursday it is,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll do it in the evening, if there’s a charter fixed for that day.’

‘Most good of you, my dear chap.’

I looked at the kind, distinguished, uncomprehending face. I knew that if his partner Charles Carthy-Todd skipped with the accumulated premiums before paying out the Newmarket widows, as I was privately certain he would, the honourable Duke of Wessex would meet every penny out of his own coffers. In all probability he could afford it, but that wasn’t the point. He would be hurt and bewildered and impossibly distressed
at having been tangled up in a fraud, and it seemed to me especially vicious that anyone should take advantage of his vulnerable simplicity and goodness.

Charles Carthy-Todd was engaged in taking candy from a mentally retarded child and then making it look as though the child had stolen it in the first place. One couldn’t help but feel protective. One couldn’t help but want to stop it.

I said impulsively, ‘Take care of yourself, sir.’

‘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 pass 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
.’

‘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.’

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
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 advertisement 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.’

I put the paper down on my knee, looked into space, 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 apron 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 Shore, 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?’