Straight

5

We hadn’t found the diamonds. The screen said:

“Oh!” She sat transfixed. “So that’s what he meant.”

“Explain,” I said.

“One morning...” She stopped, her mouth screwing up in an effort not to cry. It took her a while to be able to continue, then she said, “One morning he told me he’d invented a little puzzle for me and he would give me six months to solve it. After six months it would self-destruct. He was smiling so much.” She swallowed. “I asked him what sort of puzzle and he wouldn’t tell me. He just said he hoped I would find it.”

“Did you look?” I asked.

“Of course I did. I looked everywhere in the office, though I didn’t know what I was looking for. I even looked for a new document in the computer, but I just never gave a thought to its being filed as a secret, and my eyes just slid over the word ‘pearl,’ as I see it so often. Silly of me. Stupid.”

I said, “I don’t think you’re stupid, and I’ll honor my brother’s promise.”

She gave me a swift look of pleasure but shook her head a little and said, “I didn’t find it. I’d never have solved it except for you.” She hesitated. “How about ten percent?”

“Twenty,” I said firmly. “I’m going to need your help and your knowledge, and if Annette is Personal Assistant, as it says on the door of her office, you can be Deputy Personal Assistant, with the new salary to go with the job.”

She turned a deeper shade of rose and busied herself with making a printout of Greville’s instruction, which she folded and put in her handbag.

“I’ll leave the secret in the computer,” she said with misty fondness. “No one else will ever find it.” She pressed a few buttons and the screen went blank, and I wondered how many times in private she would call up the magic words that Greville had left her.

I wondered if they would really self-destruct: if one could program something on a computer to erase itself on a given date. I didn’t see why not, but I thought Greville might have given her strong clues before the six months were out.

I asked her if she would print out first a list of everything currently in the vault and then as many things as she thought would help me understand the business better, like the volume and value of a day’s, a week’s, a month’s sales; like which items were most popular, and which least.

“I can tell you that what’s very popular just now is black onyx. Fifty years ago they say it was all amber, now no one buys it. Jewelry goes in and out of fashion like everything else.” She began tapping keys. “Give me a little while and I’ll print you a crash course.”

“Thanks.” I smiled, and waited while the printer spat out a gargantuan mouthful of glittering facets. Then I took the list in search of Annette, who was alone in the stock rooms, and asked her to give me a quick canter round the vault.

“There aren’t any diamonds there,” she said positively.

“I’d better learn what is.”

“You don’t seem like a jockey,” she said.

“How many do you know?”

She stared. “None, except you.”

“On the whole,” I said mildly, “jockeys are like anyone else. Would you feel I was better able to manage here if I were, say, a piano tuner? Or an actor? Or a clergyman?”

She said faintly, “No.”

“OK, then. We’re stuck with a jockey. Twist of fate. Do your best for the poor fellow.”

She involuntarily smiled a genuine smile which lightened her heavy face miraculously. “All right.” She paused. “You’re really like Mr. Franklin in some ways. The way you say things. Deal with honor, he said, and sleep at night.”

“You all remember what he said, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

He would have been glad, I supposed, to have left so positive a legacy. So many precepts. So much wisdom. But so few signposts to his personal life. No visible signpost to the diamonds.

In the vault Annette showed me that, besides its chemical formula, each label bore a number: if I looked at the number on the list June had printed, I would see the formula again, but also the normal names of the stones, with colors, shapes and sizes and country of origin.

“Why did he label them like this?” I asked. “It just makes it difficult to find things.”

“I believe that was his purpose,” she answered. “I told you, he was very security conscious. We had a secretary working here once who managed to steal a lot of our most valuable turquoise out of the vault. The labels read ‘turquoise’ then, which made it easy, but now they don’t.”

“What do they say?”

She smiled and pointed to a row of boxes. I looked at the labels and read Cu Al₆(PO₄) 4 (OH)₈. 4–5 (H₂O) on each of them.

“Enough to put anyone off for life,” I said.

“Exactly. That’s the point. Mr. Franklin could read formulas as easily as words, and I’ve got used to them myself now. No one but he and I handle these stones in here. We pack them into boxes ourselves and seal them before they go to Alfie for dispatch.” She looked along the rows of labels and did her best to educate me. “We sell these stones at so much per carat. A carat weighs two hundred milligrams, which means five carats to a gram, a hundred and forty-two carats to an ounce and five thousand carats to the kilo.”

“Stop right there,” I begged.

“You said you learned fast.”

“Give me a day or two.”

She nodded and said if I didn’t need her anymore she had better get on with the ledgers.

Ledgers, I thought, wilting internally. I hadn’t even started on those. I thought of the joy with which I’d left Lancaster University with a degree in Independent Studies, swearing never again to pore dutifully over books and heading straight (against my father’s written wishes) to the steeplechase stable where I’d been spending truant days as an amateur. It was true that at college I’d learned fast, because I’d had to, and learned all night often enough, keeping faith with at least the first half of my father’s letter. He’d hoped I would grow out of the lure he knew I felt for race-riding, but it was all I’d ever wanted and I couldn’t have settled to anything else. There was no long-term future in it, he’d written, besides a complete lack of financial security along with a constant risk of disablement. I ask you to be sensible, he’d said, to think it through and decide against.

Fat chance.

I sighed for the simplicity of the certainty I’d felt in those days, yet, given a second beginning, I wouldn’t have lived any differently. I had been deeply fulfilled in racing and grown old in spirit only because of the way life worked in general. Disappointments, injustices, small betrayals, they were everyone’s lot. I no longer expected everything to go right, but enough had gone right to leave me at least in a balance of content.

With no feeling that the world owed me anything, I applied myself to the present boring task of opening every packet in every box in the quest for little bits of pure carbon. It wasn’t that I expected to find the diamonds there: it was just that it would be so stupid not to look in case they were.

I worked methodically, putting the boxes one at a time on the wide shelf which ran along the right-hand wall, unfolding the stiff white papers with the soft inner linings and looking at hundreds of thousands of peridots, chrysoberyls, garnets and aquamarines until my head spun. I stopped in fact when I’d done only a third of the stock because apart from the airlessness of the vault it was physically tiring standing on one leg all the time, and the crutches got in the way as much as they helped. I refolded the last of the XY₃ Z₆[(O,Oh,F)₄(BO₃)₃ Si₆O₁₈] (tourmaline) and acknowledged defeat.

“What did you learn?” Annette asked when I reappeared in Greville’s office. She was in there, replacing yet more papers in their proper files, a task apparently nearing completion.

“Enough to look at jewelry shops differently,” I said.

She smiled. “When I read magazines I don’t look at the clothes, I look at the jewelry.”

I could see that she would. I thought that I might also, despite myself, from then on. I might even develop an affinity for black onyx cuff links.

It was by that time four o’clock in the afternoon of what seemed a very long day. I looked up the racing program in Greville’s diary, decided that Nicholas Loder might well have passed over going to Redcar, Warwick and Folkestone, and dialed his number. His secretary answered, and yes, Mr. Loder was at home, and yes, he would speak to me.

He came on the line with almost none of the previous evening’s agitation, bass resonances positively throbbing down the wire.

“I’ve been talking to Weatherby’s and the Jockey Club,” he said easily, “and there’s fortunately no problem. They agree that before probate the horses belong to Saxony Franklin Limited and not to you, and they will not bar them from racing in that name.”

“Good,” I said, and was faintly surprised.

“They say of course that there has to be at least one registered agent appointed by the company to be responsible for the horses, such appointment to be sealed with the company’s seal and registered at Weatherby’s. Your brother appointed both himself and myself as registered agents, and although he has died I remain a registered agent as before and can act for the company on my own.”

“Ah,” I said.

“Which being so,” Loder said happily, “Dozen Roses runs at York as planned.”

“And trots up?”

He chuckled. “Let’s hope so.”

That chuckle, I thought, was the ultimate in confidence.

“I’d be grateful if you could let Saxony Franklin know whenever the horses are due to run in the future,” I said.

“I used to speak to your brother personally at his home number. I can hardly do that with you, as you don’t own the horses.”

“No,” I agreed. “I meant, please will you tell the company? I’ll give you the number. And would you ask for Mrs. Annette Adams? She was Greville’s second-in-command.”

He could hardly say he wouldn’t, so I read out the number and he repeated it as he wrote it down.

“Don’t forget, though, that there’s only a month left of the Flat season,” he said. “They’ll probably run only once more each. Two at the very most. Then I’ll sell them for you, that would be best. No problem. Leave it to me.”

He was right, logically, but I still illogically disliked his haste.

“As executor, I’d have to approve any sale,” I said, hoping I was right. “In advance.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” Reassuring heartiness. “Your injury,” he said, “what exactly is it?”

“Busted ankle.”

“Ah. Bad luck. Getting on well, I hope?” The sympathy sounded more like relief to me than anything else, and again I couldn’t think why.

“Getting on,” I said.

“Good, good. Goodbye then. The York race should be on the television on Saturday. I expect you’ll watch it?”

“I expect so.”

“Fine.” He put down his receiver in great good humor and left me wondering what I’d missed.

Greville’s telephone rang again immediately, and it was Brad to tell me that he had returned from his day’s visit to an obscure aunt in Walthamstow and was downstairs in the front hall; all he actually said was, “I’m back.”

“Great. I won’t be long.”

I got a click in reply. End of conversation.

I did mean to leave almost at once but there were two more phone calls in fairly quick succession. The first was from a man introducing himself as Elliot Trelawney, a colleague of Greville’s from the West London Magistrates Court. He was extremely sorry, he said, to hear about his death, and he truly sounded it. A positive voice, used to attention: a touch of plummy accent.

“Also,” he said, “I’d like to talk to you about some projects Greville and I were working on. I’d like to have his notes.”

I said rather blankly, “What projects? What notes?”

“I could explain better face to face,” he said. “Could I ask you to meet me? Say tomorrow, early evening, over a drink? You know that pub just round the. corner from Greville’s house? The Rook and the Castle? There. He and I often met there. Five-thirty, six, either of those suit you?”

“Five-thirty,” I said obligingly.

“How shall I know you?”

“By my crutches.”

It silenced him momentarily. I let him off embarrassment.

“They’re temporary,” I said.

“Er, fine, then. Until tomorrow.”

He cut himself off, and I asked Annette if she knew him, Elliot Trelawney? She shook her head. She couldn’t honestly say she knew anyone outside the office who was known to Greville personally. Unless you counted Prospero Jenks, she said doubtfully. And even then, she herself had never really met him, only talked to him frequently on the telephone.

“Prospero Jenks... alias Fabergé?”

“That’s the one.”

I thought a bit. “Would you mind phoning him now?” I said. “Tell him about Greville and ask if I can go to see him to discuss the future. Just say I’m Greville’s brother, nothing else.”

She grinned. “No horses? Pas de gee-gees?”

Annette, I thought in amusement, was definitely loosening up.

“No horses,” I agreed.

She made the call but without results. Prospero Jenks wouldn’t be reachable until morning. She would try then, she said.

I levered myself upright and said I’d see her tomorrow. She nodded, taking it for granted that I would be there. The quicksand was winning, I thought. I was less and less able to get out.

Going down the passage, I stopped to look in on Alfie, whose day’s work stood in columns of loaded cardboard boxes waiting to be entrusted to the mail.

“How many do you send out every day?” I asked, gesturing to them.

He looked up briefly from stretching sticky tape round yet another parcel. “About twenty, twenty-five regular, but more from August to Christmas.” He cut off the tape expertly and stuck an address label deftly on the box top. “Twenty-eight so far today.”

“Do you bet, Alfie?” I asked. “Read the racing papers?”

He glanced at me with a mixture of defensiveness and defiance, neither of which feeling was necessary. “I knew you was him,” he said. “The others said you couldn’t be.”

“You know Dozen Roses too?”

A tinge of craftiness took over in his expression. “Started winning again, didn’t he? I missed him the first time, but yes, I’ve had a little tickle since.”

“He runs on Saturday at York, but he’ll be odds-on,” I said.

“Will he win, though? Will they be trying with him? I wouldn’t put my shirt on that.”

“Nicholas Loder says he’ll trot up.”

He knew who Nicholas Loder was: didn’t need to ask. With cynicism, he put his just-finished box on some sturdy scales and wrote the result on the cardboard with a thick black pen. He must have been well into his sixties, I thought, with deep lines from his nose to the corners of his mouth and pale sagging skin everywhere from which most of the elasticity had vanished. His hands, with the veins of age beginning to show dark blue, were nimble and strong however, and he bent to pick up another heavy box with a supple back. A tough old customer, I thought, and essentially more in touch with street awareness than the exaggerated Jason.

“Mr. Franklin’s horses run in and out,” he said pointedly. “And as a jock you’d know about that.”

Before I could decide whether or not he was intentionally insulting me, Annette came hurrying down the passage calling my name.

“Derek... Oh there you are. Still here, good. There’s another phone call for you.” She about-turned and went back toward Greville’s office, and I followed her, noticing with interest that she’d dropped the Mister from my name. Yesterday’s unthinkable was today’s natural, now that I was established as a jockey, which was OK as far as it went, as long as it didn’t go too far.

I picked up the receiver which was lying on the black desk and said, “Hello? Derek Franklin speaking.”

A familiar voice said, “Thank God for that. I’ve been trying your Hungerford number all day. Then I remembered about your brother...” He spoke loudly, driven by urgency.

Milo Shandy, the trainer I’d ridden most for during the past three seasons: a perpetual optimist in the face of world evidence of corruption, greed and lies.

“I’ve a crisis on my hands,” he bellowed, “and can you come over? Will you pull out all stops to come over first thing in the morning?”

“Er, what for?”

“You know the Ostermeyers? They’ve flown over from Pittsburgh for some affair in London and they phoned me and I told them Datepalm is for sale. And you know that if they buy him I can keep him here, otherwise I’ll lose him because he’ll have to go to auction. And they want you here when they see him work on the Downs and they can only manage first lot tomorrow, and they think the sun twinkles out of your backside, so for God’s sake come.”

Interpreting the agitation was easy. Datepalm was the horse on which I’d won the Gold Cup: a seven-year-old gelding still near the beginning of what with luck would be a notable jumping career. Its owner had recently dropped the bombshell of telling Milo she was leaving England to marry an Australian, and if he could sell Datepalm to one of his other owners for the astronomical figure she named, she wouldn’t send it to public auction and out of his yard.

Milo had been in a panic most of the time since then because none of his other owners had so far thought the horse worth the price, his Gold Cup success having been judged lucky in the absence through coughing of a couple of more established stars. Both Milo and I thought Datepalm better than his press, and I had as strong a motive as Milo for wanting him to stay in the stable.

“Calm down,” I assured him. “I’ll be there.”

He let out a lot of breath in a rush. “Tell the Ostermeyers he’s a really good horse.”

“He is,” I said, “and I will.”

“Thanks, Derek.” His voice dropped to normal decibels. “Oh, and by the way, there’s no horse called Koningin Beatrix, and not likely to be. Weatherby’s say Koningin Beatrix means Queen Beatrix, as in Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, and they frown on people naming racehorses after royal persons.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, thanks for finding out.”

“Any time. See you in the morning. For God’s sake don’t be late. You know the Ostermeyers get up before larks.”

“What I need,” I said to Annette, putting down the receiver, “is an appointments book, so as not to forget where I’ve said I’ll be.”

She began looking in the drawerful of gadgets.

“Mr. Franklin had an electric memory thing he used to put appointments in. You could use that for now.” She sorted through the black collection, but without result. “Stay here a minute,” she said, closing the drawer, “while I ask June if she knows where it is.”

She went away busily and I thought about how to convince the Ostermeyers, who could afford anything they set their hearts on, that Datepalm would bring them glory if not necessarily repay their bucks. They had had steeplechasers with Milo from time to time, but not for almost a year at the moment. I’d do a great deal, I thought, to persuade them it was time to come back.

An alarm like a digital watch alarm sounded faintly, muffled, and to begin with I paid it no attention, but as it persisted I opened the gadget drawer to investigate and, of course, as I did so it immediately stopped. Shrugging, I closed the drawer again, and Annette came back bearing a sheet of paper but no gadget.

“June doesn’t know where the Wizard is, so I’ll make out a rough calendar on plain paper.”

“What’s the Wizard?” I asked.

“The calculator. Baby computer. June says it does everything but boil eggs.”

“Why do you call it the Wizard?” I asked.

“It has that name on it. It’s about the size of a paperback book and it was Mr. Franklin’s favorite object. He took it everywhere.” She frowned. “Maybe it’s in his car, wherever that is.”

The car. Another problem. “I’ll find the car,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. Somehow or other I would have to find the car. “Maybe the Wizard was stolen out of this office in the break-in,” I said.

She stared at me with widely opening eyes. “The thief would have to have known what it was. It folds up flat. You can’t see any buttons.”

“All the gadgets were out on the floor, weren’t they?”

“Yes.” It troubled her. “Why the address book? Why the engagements for October? Why the Wizard?”

Because of diamonds, I thought instinctively, but couldn’t rationalize it. Someone had perhaps been looking, as I was, for the treasure map marked X. Perhaps they’d known it existed. Perhaps they’d found it.

“I’ll get here a couple of hours later tomorrow,” I said to Annette. “And I must leave by five to meet Elliot Trelawney at five-thirty. So if you reach Prospero Jenks, ask him if I could go to see him in between. Or failing that, any time Thursday. Write off Friday because of the funeral.”

Greville died only the day before yesterday, I thought. It already seemed half a lifetime.

Annette said, “Yes, Mr. Franklin,” and bit her lip in dismay.

I half smiled at her. “Call me Derek. Just plain Derek. And invest it with whatever you feel.”

“It’s confusing,” she said weakly, “from minute to minute.”

“Yes, I know.”

With a certain relief I rode down in the service elevator and swung across to Brad in the car. He hopped out of the front seat and shoveled me into the back, tucking the crutches in beside me and waiting while I lifted my leg along the padded leather and wedged myself into the corner for the most comfortable angle of ride.

“Home?” he said.

“No. Like I told you on the way up, we’ll stop in Kensington for a while, if you don’t mind.”

He gave the tiniest of nods. I’d provided him in the morning with a detailed large-scale map of West London, asking him to work out how to get to the road where Greville had lived, and I hoped to hell he had done it, because I was feeling more drained than I cared to admit and not ready to ride in irritating traffic-clogged circles.

“Look out for a pub called the Rook and the Castle, would you?” I asked, as we neared the area. “Tomorrow at five-thirty I have to meet someone there.”

Brad nodded and with the unerring instinct of the beer drinker quickly found it, merely pointing vigorously to tell me.

“Great,” I said, and he acknowledged that with a wiggle of the shoulders.

He drew up so confidently outside Greville’s address that I wondered if he had reconnoitered earlier in the day, except that his aunt lived theoretically in the opposite direction. In any case he handed me the crutches, opened the gate of the small front garden and said loquaciously, “I’ll wait in the car.”

“I might be an hour or more. Would you mind having a quick recce up and down this street and those nearby to see if you can find an old Rover with this number?” I gave him a card with it on. “My brother’s car,” I said.

He gave me a brief nod and turned away, and I looked up at the tall townhouse that Greville had moved into about three months previously, and which I’d never visited. It was creamy gray, gracefully proportioned, with balustraded steps leading up to the black front door, and businesslike but decorative metal grilles showing behind the glass in every window from semi-basement to roof.

I crossed the grassy garden and went up the steps, and found there were three locks on the front door. Cursing slightly I yanked out Greville’s half ton of keys and by trial and error found the way into his fortress.

Late afternoon sun slanted yellowly into a long main drawing room which was on the left of the entrance hall, throwing the pattern of the grilles in shadows on the grayish-brown carpet. The walls, pale salmon, were adorned with vivid paintings of stained-glass cathedral windows, and the fabric covering sofa and armchairs was of a large broken herringbone pattern in dark brown and white, confusing to the eye. I reflected ruefully that I didn’t know whether he’d taken it over from the past owner. I knew only his taste in clothes, food, gadgets and horses. Not very much. Not enough.

The drawing room was dustless and tidy; unlived in. I returned to the front hall from where stairs led up and down, but before tackling those I went through a door at the rear which opened into a much smaller room filled with a homely clutter of books, newspapers, magazines, black leather chairs, clocks, chrysanthemums in pots, a tray of booze and framed medieval brass rubbings on deep green walls. This was all Greville, I thought. This was home.

I left it for the moment and hopped down the stairs to the semibasement, where there was a bedroom, unused, a small bathroom and a decorator-style dining room looking out through grilles to a rear garden, with a narrow spotless kitchen alongside.

Fixed to the fridge by a magnetic strawberry was a note.

I looked around for a pencil, found a ballpoint, pulled the note from its clip and wrote on the back, asking Mrs. P. to call the following number (Saxony Franklin’s) and speak to Derek or Annette. I didn’t sign it, but put it back under the strawberry where I supposed it would stay for another week, a sorry message in waiting.

I looked in the fridge which contained little but milk, butter, grapes, a pork pie and two bottles of champagne.

Diamonds in the ice cubes? I didn’t think he would have put them anywhere so chancy: besides, he was security conscious, not paranoid.

I hauled myself upstairs to the hall again and then went on up to the next floor, where there was a bedroom and bathroom suite in self-conscious black and white. Greville had slept there: the built-in closets and drawers held his clothes, the bathroom cabinet his privacy. He had been sparing in his possessions, leaving a single row of shoes, several white shirts on hangers, six assorted suits and a rack of silk ties. The drawers were tidy with sweaters, sport shirts, underclothes, socks. Our mother, I thought with a smile, would have been proud of him. She’d tried hard and unsuccessfully to instill tidiness into both of us as children, and it looked as if we’d both got better with age.

There was little else to see. The drawer in the bedside table revealed indigestion tablets, a flashlight and a paperback, John D. MacDonald. No gadgets and no treasure maps.

With a sigh I went into the only other room on that floor and found it unfurnished and papered with garish metallic silvery roses which had been half ripped off at one point. So much for the decorator.

There was another flight of stairs going upward, but I didn’t climb them. There would only be, by the looks of things, unused rooms to find there, and I thought I would go and look later when stairs weren’t such a sweat. Anything deeply interesting in that house seemed likely to be found in the small back sitting room, so it was to there that I returned.

I sat for a while in the chair that was clearly Greville’s favorite, from where he could see the television and the view over the garden. Places that people had left forever should be seen through their eyes, I thought. His presence was strong in that room, and in me.

Beside his chair there was a small antique table with, on its polished top, a telephone and an answering machine. A red light for messages received was shining on the machine, so after a while I pressed a button marked “rewind,” followed by another marked “play.” A woman’s voice spoke without preamble.

“Darling, where are you? Do call me.”

There was a series of between-message clicks, then the same voice again, this time packed with anxiety.

“Darling, please please call. I’m very worried. Where are you, darling? Please call. I love you.”

Again the clicks, but no more messages.

Poor lady, I thought. Grief and tears waiting in the wings.

I got up and explored the room more fully, pausing by two drawers in a table beside the window. They contained two small black unidentified gadgets which baffled me and which I stowed in my pockets, and also a slotted tray containing a rather nice collection of small bears, polished and carved from shaded pink, brown and charcoal stone. I laid the tray on top of the table beside some chrysanthemums and came next to a box made of greenish stone, also polished, which, true to Greville’s habit, was firmly locked. Thinking perhaps that one of the keys fitted it, I brought out the bunch again and began to try the smallest.

I was facing the window with my back to the room, balancing on one foot and leaning a thigh against the table, my arms out of the crutches, intent on what I was doing and disastrously unheeding. The first I knew of anyone else in the house was a muffled exclamation behind me, and I turned to see a dark-haired woman coming through the doorway, her wild glance rigidly fixing on the green stone box. Without pause she came fast toward me, pulling out of a pocket a black object like a long fat cigar.

I opened my mouth to speak but she brought her hand round in a strong swinging arc, and in that travel the short black cylinder more than doubled its length into a thick silvery flexible stick which crashed with shattering force against my left upper arm, enough to stop a heavyweight in round one.