CHAPTER EIGHT
"Which door did you go out of, with the dogs?" I asked.
"The kitchen door, like I always do."
"The kitchen door is about five steps along that covered way from the rear door into the garage."
"Yes, of course it is," Malcolm said testily.
"You told me that you set off down the garden with the dogs, and I suppose you told the police the same thing?"
"Yes, of course I did."
"But you can't really remember actually going. You remember that you meant to, isn't that what you told me?"
He frowned. "I suppose it is."
"So what if you never made it to the garden, but were knocked out right there by the kitchen door? And what if you weren't dragged from there into the garage, but carried?"
His mouth opened. "But I'm -"
"You're not too heavy," I said. "I could carry you easily in a fireman's lift."
He was five foot seven, stocky but not fat. He weighed ten stone something, I would have guessed.
"And the fingerprints?" Norman West asked.
"In a fireman's lift," I said, "you sling the person you want to carry over your left shoulder, don't you, with his head hanging down your back. Then you grasp his knees with your left arm, and hold his right wrist in your own right hand, to stop him slipping off?"
They both nodded.
"So if you're holding someone's wrist, you can put his hand easily onto any surface you like, including car door handles… particularly," I said, thinking, "if you've opened the doors yourself first with gloves on, so that your victim's prints will be on top of any smudges you have made."
"You should have been an assassin," Malcolm said. "You'd have been good at it."
"So now we have Malcolm slumped in the back seat, half lying, like you said. So next you switch on the engine and leave the doors open so that all the nice fumes pour into the car quickly."
"Doors?" Malcolm interrupted.
"The driver's door and one of the rear doors, at the least."
"Oh, yes."
"And then you have," I said, "a suicide."
"And when I woke up," Malcolm said gloomily, "I put my prints all over the place. On the ignition key… everywhere."
"No one could have counted on that."
"It just looked bad to the police."
We contemplated the scenario.
"If it happened like that, "West said, "as indeed it could have done, whoever attacked you had to know that you would go out of the kitchen door at around that time."
Malcolm said bleakly, "if I'm at home, I always go for a walk with the dogs about then. Take them out, bring them back, give them their dinners, pour myself a drink. Routine!"
"And… eris there anyone in your family who doesn't know when you walk the dogs?"
"Done it all my life, at that time," Malcolm said.
There was a short silence, then I said, "I wish I'd known all this when that car nearly killed us at Newmarket. We really ought to have told the police." "I was fed up with them," Malcolm said. "I've spent hours and hours with the suspicious buggers since Moira's death. I'm allergic to them. They bring me out in a rash."
"You can't blame them, sir. Most murdered wives are killed by their husbands," West said. "And frankly, you appeared to have an extremely strong motive."
"Rubbish," Malcolm said. "I don't see how people can kill people they've loved."
"Unfortunately it's common." West paused. "Do you want me to continue with your family, sir, considering how little progress I've been able to make with them?"
"Yes," Malcolm said heavily. "Carry on. I'll get Joyce to tell them all to answer your questions. She seems to be able to get them to do what she wants."
To get them to do what THEY want, I thought. She couldn't stir them into courses they didn't like.
Norman West put his notebook into his jacket pocket and shifted his weight forward on his chair.
"Before you go," I said, "I thought you might like to know that I asked the telephonist of the Cambridge hotel if anyone besides yourself had asked if a Mr Pembroke was staying there last weekend. She said they'd definitely had at least three calls asking for Mr Pembroke, two men and a woman, and she remembered because she thought it odd that no one wanted to talk to him, or would leave a message; they only wanted to know if he was there."
"THREE!" Malcolm exclaimed.
"One would be Mr West," I pointed out. To West, I said, "In view of that, could you tell us who asked you to find my father?"
West hesitated. "I don't positively know which Mrs Pembroke it was. And… er… even if I became sure during these investigations, well, no sir, I don't think I could."
"Professional ethics," Malcolm said, nodding.
"I did warn you, sir," West said to me, "about a conflict of interests!"
"So you did. Hasn't she paid you yet, then? No name on any cheque?"
"No, sir, not yet."
He rose to his feet, no one's idea of Atlas, though world-weary all the same. He shook my hand damply, and Malcolm's, and said he would be in touch. When he'd gone, Malcolm sighed heavily and told me to pour him some scotch.
"Don't you want some?" he said, when I gave him the glass.
"Not right now."
"What did you think of Mr West?"
"He's past it."
"You're too young. He's experienced."
"And no match for the female Pembrokes."
Malcolm smiled with irony. "Few are," he said.
We flew to Paris in the morning in the utmost luxury and were met by a chauffeured limousine which took its place with regal slowness in the solid traffic jam moving as one entity towards Longchamp.
The French racecourse, aflutter with flags, seemed to be swallowing TOUT LE MONDE with insatiable appetite, until no one could walk in a straight line through the public areas where the crowds were heavy with guttural vowels and garlic.
Malcolm's jet/ limousine package also included, I found, an invitation from the French Jockey Club, passes to everywhere and a Lucullan lunch appointment with the co-owner of Blue Clancy, Mr Ramsey Osborn.
Ramsey Osborn, alight with the JOIE DE VIVRE gripping the whole place, turned out to be a very large sixtyish American who towered over Malcolm and took to him at once. Malcolm seemed to see the same immediate signals. They were cronies within two minutes.
"My son, Ian," Malcolm said eventually, introducing me.
"Glad to know you." He shook my hand vigorously. "The one who fixed the sale, right?" His eyes were light grey and direct. "Tell you the truth, there's a colt and a filly I want to buy for next year's Classics, and this way Blue Clancy will finance them very nicely."
"But if Blue Clancy wins the Arc?" I said.
"No regrets, son." He turned to Malcolm. "You've a cautious boy, here."
"Yeah," Malcolm said. "Cautious like an astronaut."
The Osborn grey eyes swivelled back my way. "Is that so? Do you bet?"
"Cautiously, sir." He laughed, but it wasn't unalloyed good humour. Malcolm, I thought, was much more to his liking. I left them sitting down at table together and, confident enough that no assassin would penetrate past the eagle-eyed doorkeepers of the upper citadel of the French Jockey Club, went down myself to ground level, happier to be with the action.
I had been racing in France a good deal, having for some years been assistant to a trainer who sent horses across the Channel as insouciantly as to York. Paris and Deauville were nearer anyway, he used to say, despatching me from Epsom via nearby Gatwick airport whenever he felt disinclined to go himself. I knew in consequence a smattering of racecourse French and where to find what I wanted, essential assets in the vast stands bulging with hurrying, vociferous, uninhibited French racegoers.
I loved the noise, the smell, the movement, the quick angers, the gesticulations, the extravagance of ground-level French racing. British jockeys tended to think French racegoers madly aggressive, and certainly once I'd actually had to defend with my fists a jockey who'd lost on a favourite I'd brought over. jockeys in general had been insulted and battered to the extent that they no longer had to walk through crowds when going out or back from races at many tracks, and at Longchamp made the journey from weighing- room to horse by going up an elevator enclosed with plastic walls like a tunnel, across a bridge, and down a similar plastic-tunnel escalator on the other side.