The Edge

Chapter Twenty

I was looking forward to talking to Mrs Baudelaire. I dialled her number and Bill himself answered.

'Hello,' I said, surprised. 'It's Tor Kelsey. How's your mother?'

There was a long, awful pause.

'She's ill,' I said with anxiety.

'She… er… she died… early this morning.'

'Oh… no.' She couldn't have, I thought. It couldn't be true. 'I talked to her yesterday,' I said.

'We knew… she knew… it would only be weeks. But yesterday evening there was a crisis.'

I was silent. I felt her loss as if she'd been Aunt Viv restored to me and snatched away. I'd wanted so very much to meet her.

'Tor?' Bill's voice said.

I swallowed. 'Your mother… was great.'

He would hear the smothered tears in my voice, I thought. He would think me crazy.

'If it's of any use to you,' he said, 'she felt like that about you, too. You made her last week a good one. She wanted to live to find out what happened. One of the last things she said was… "I don't want to go before the end of the story. I want to see that invisible young man… " She was slipping away… all the time.'

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day:

Rage, rage against the dying of the light…

'Tor?' Bill said.

'I'm so very sorry,' I said with more control. 'So sorry.'

'Thank you.'

'I don't suppose…' I said, and paused, feeling helpless.

'You suppose wrong,' he replied instantly. 'I've been waiting here for you to phone. We would both fail her if we didn't go straight on. I've had hours to think this out. The last thing she would want would be for us to give up. So I'll start things off by telling you we've had a telex from Filmer announcing that he is the sole owner of Laurentide Ice, but we are going to inform him that the Ontario Racing Commission are rescinding his licence to own horses. We're also telling him he won't be admitted to the President's lunch at Exhibition Park.'

'I'd… er… like to do it differently,' I said.

'How do you mean?'

I sighed deeply and talked to him also for a long time. He listened as the Brigadier had, with intermittent throat noises, and at the end he said simply, 'I do wish she'd been alive to hear all this.'

'Yes, so do I.'

'Well,' he paused. 'I'll go along with it. The real problem is time.'

'Mm.'

'You'd better talk to Mercer Lorrimore yourself.'

'But…'

'No buts. You're there. I can't get there until tomorrow late afternoon, not with all you want me to do here. Talk to Mercer without delay, you don't want him coming back to Toronto.'

I said with reluctance, 'All right.' But I had known that I would have to.

'Good. Use all the authority you need. Val and I will back you.'

Thank you… very much.'

'See you tomorrow,' he said.

I put the receiver down slowly. Death could be colossally unfair, one knew that, but rage, rage… I felt anger for' her as much as grief. Do not go gentle into that good night… I thought it probable, if I remembered right, that the last word she'd said to me was 'Good night'. Good night dear, dear Mrs Baudelaire. Go gentle. Go sweetly into that good night.

I sat for a while without energy, feeling the lack of sleep, feeling the nagging pain, feeling the despondency her death had opened the door to: feeling unequal to the next two days, even though I'd set them up myself.

With an effort, after an age I got through to the Four Seasons Hotel and asked for Mercer, but found myself talking to Nell.

'All the calls are being rerouted to me,' she said. 'Bambi is lying down. Mercer and Xanthe are on their way to Hope in the helicopter, which was reordered for him, so that he can identify Sheridan's body which is being taken there by road.'

'It all sounds so clinical.'

'The authorities want to make sure it's Sheridan before they make any arrangements.'

'When will Mercer and Xanthe be back, do you know?'

'About six, they expected.'

'Urn… the Jockey Club asked me to fix up a brief meeting. Do you think Mercer would agree to that?'

'He's being terrifically helpful to everyone. Almost too calm.'

I thought things over. 'Can you get hold of him in Hope?'

She hesitated. 'Yes, I suppose so. I have the address and the phone number of where he was going, but I think it's a police station… or a mortuary.'

'Could you… could you tell him that on their return to the hotel, a car will be waiting to take him straight on to a brief meeting with the jockey Club? Tell him the Jockey Club send their sincere condolences and ask for just a little of his time.'

'I guess I could,' she said doubtfully. 'What about Xanthe?'

'Mercer alone,' I said positively.

'Is it important?' she asked, and I could imagine her frowning.

'I think it's important for Mercer.'

'All right.' She made up her mind. 'Xanthe can take the phone calls for her mother, then, because I have to go to this cocktail party.' A thought struck her. 'Aren't some of the Jockey Club coming to the party?'

'Mercer won't want to go. They want a quiet talk with him alone.'

'OK then, I'll try to arrange it.'

'Very many thanks,' I said fervently. 'I'll call back to check.'

I called back at five o'clock. The helicopter was in the air on its way back, Nell said, and Mercer had agreed to being picked up at the hotel.

'You're brilliant.'

'Tell the Jockey Club not to keep him long. He'll be tired… and he's identified Sheridan.'

'I could kiss you,' I said. 'The way to a man's heart is through his travel agent.'

She laughed. 'Always supposing that's where one wants to go.'

She put her receiver down with a delicate click. I did not want to lose her, I thought.

The car I sent for Mercer picked him up successfully and brought him to the Hyatt, the chauffeur telling him, as requested, the room to go straight up to. He rang the doorbell of the suite I'd engaged more or less in his honour, and I opened the door to let him in.

He came in about two paces and then stopped and peered with displeasure at my face.

'What is this?' he demanded with growing anger, preparing to depart.

I closed the door behind him.

'I work for the Jockey Club,' I said. 'The British Jockey Club. I am seconded here with the Canadian Jockey Club for the duration of the race train Celebration of Canadian Racing.'

'But you're… you're…'

'My name is Tor Kelsey,' I said. 'It was judged better that I didn't go openly on the train as a sort of security agent for the Jockey Club, so I went as a waiter.'

He looked me over. Looked at the rich young owner's good suit that I'd put on for the occasion. Looked at the expensive room.

'My God,' he said weakly. He took a few paces forward. 'Why am I here?'

'I work for Brigadier Valentine Catto in England,' I said, 'and Bill Baudelaire over here. They are the heads of the Jockey Club Security Services.'

He nodded. He knew them.

'As they cannot be here, they have both given me their authority to speak to you on their behalf.'

'Yes, but… what about?'

'Would you sit down? Would you like… a drink?'

He looked at me with a certain dry humour. 'Do you have any identification?'

'Yes.' I fetched my passport. He opened it. Looked at my name, at my likeness, and at my occupation: investigator.

He handed it back. 'Yes, I'll have a drink,' he said, 'as you're so good at serving them. Cognac if possible.'

I opened the cupboard that the hotel had supplied at my request with wine, vodka, Scotch and brandy, and poured the amount I knew he'd like, even adding the heretical ice. He took the glass with a twist of a smile, and sat in one of the armchairs.

'No one guessed about you,' he said. 'No one came anywhere near it.' He took a sip reflectively. 'Why were you on the train?'

'I was sent because of one of the passengers. Because of Julius Filmer.'

The ease that had been growing in him fled abruptly. He put the glass down on the table beside him and stared at me.

'Mr Lorrimore,' I said, sitting down opposite him, 'I am sorry about your son. Truly sorry. All of the Jockey Club send their sympathy. I think though that I should tell you straight away that Brigadier Catto, Bill Baudelaire and myself all know about the… er… incident… of the cats.'

He looked deeply shocked. 'You can't know! '

'I imagine that Julius Filmer knows also.'

He made a hopeless gesture with one hand. 'However did he find out?'

The Brigadier is working on that in England.'

'And how did you find out?'

'Not from anyone you swore to silence.'

'Not from the college?'

'No.'

He covered his face briefly with one hand.

'Julius Filmer may still suggest you give him Voting Right in exchange for his keeping quiet,' I said.

He lowered the hand to his throat and closed his eyes. 'I've thought of that,' he said. He opened his eyes again. 'Did you see the last scene of the mystery?'

'Yes,' I said.

'I haven't known what to do… since then.'

'It's you who has to decide,' I said. 'But… can I tell you a few things?'

He gave a vague gesture of assent, and I talked to him, also, for quite a long time. He listened with total concentration, mostly watching my face. People who were repudiating in their minds every word one said didn't look at one's face but at the floor, or at a table, at anything else. I knew, by the end, that he would do what I was asking, and I was grateful because it wouldn't be easy for him.

When I'd finished, he said thoughtfully, 'That mystery was no coincidence, was it? The father blackmailed because of his child's crime, the groom murdered because he knew too much, the man who would kill himself if he couldn't keep his racehorses… Did you write it yourself?'

'All that part, yes. Not from the beginning.'

He smiled faintly. 'You showed me what I was doing… was prepared to do. But beyond that… you showed Sheridan.'

'I wondered,' I said.

'Did you? Why?'

'He looked different afterwards. He had changed.'

Mercer said, 'How could you see that?'

'It's my job.'

He looked startled. 'There isn't such a job.'

'Yes,' I said, 'there is.'

'Explain,' he said.

'I watch… for things that aren't what they were, and try to understand, and find out why.'

'All the time?'

I nodded. 'Yes.'

He drank his brandy thoughtfully. 'What change did you see in Sheridan?'

I hesitated. 'I just thought that things had shifted in his mind. Like seeing something from a different perspective. A sort of revelation. I didn't know if it would last.'

'It might not have done.'

'No.'

'He said,' Mercer said,' "Sorry, Dad. " '

It was my turn to stare.

'He said it before he went out on to the platform.' Mercer swallowed with difficulty and eventually went on. 'He had been so quiet. I couldn't sleep. I went out to the saloon about dawn, and he was sitting there. I asked him what was the matter, and he said, "I fucked things up, didn't I?" We all knew he had. It wasn't anything new. But it was the first time he'd said so. I tried… I tried to comfort him, to say we would stand by him, no matter what. He knew about Filmer's threat, you know. Filmer said in front of all of us that he knew about the cats.' He looked unseeingly over his glass. 'It wasn't the only time it had happened. Sheridan killed two cats like that in our garden when he was fourteen. We got therapy for him… They said it was the upheaval of adolescence.' He paused. 'One psychiatrist said Sheridan was psychopathic, he couldn't help what he did… but he could, really, most of the time. He could help being discourteous, but he thought being rich gave him the right… I told him it didn't.'

'Why did you send him to Cambridge?' I asked.

'My father was there, and established a scholarship. They gave it to Sheridan as thanks-as a gift. He couldn't concentrate long enough to get into college otherwise. But then… the Master of the college said they couldn't keep him, scholarship or not, and I understood… of course they couldn't. We thought he would be all right there… we so hoped he would.'

They'd spent a lot of hope on Sheridan, I thought.

'I don't know if he meant to jump this morning when he went out on the platform,' Mercer said. 'I don't know if it was just an impulse. He gave way to impulses very easily. Unreasonable impulses… almost insane, sometimes.'

'It was seductive, out there,' I said. 'Easy to jump.'

Mercer looked at me gratefully. 'Did you feel it?'

'Sort of.'

'Sheridan's revelation lasted until this morning,' he said.

'Yes,' I said. 'I saw… when I brought your tea.'

'The waiter… 'He shook his head, still surprised.

'I'd be grateful,' I said, 'if you don't tell anyone else about the waiter.'

'Why not?'

'Because most of my work depends on anonymity. My bosses don't want people like Filmer to know I exist.'

He nodded slowly with comprehension. 'I won't tell.'

He stood up and shook my hand. 'What do they pay you?' he asked.

I smiled. 'Enough.'

'I wish Sheridan had been able to have a job. He couldn't stick at anything.' He sighed. 'I'll believe that what he did this morning was for us. "Sorry, Dad… "'

Mercer looked me in the eyes and made a simple statement, without defensiveness, without apology.

'I loved my son,' he said.

On Monday morning, I want to Vancouver station to back up George Burley in the rail company's dual enquiry into the hot box and the suicide.

I was written down as T. Titmuss, Acting Crew, which amused me and seemed to cover several, interpretations. George was stalwart and forthright, with the ironic chuckles subdued to merely a gleam. He was a railwayman of some prestige, I was glad to see, who was treated with respect if not quite deference, and his were the views they listened to.

He gave the railway investigators a photograph of Johnson and said that while he hadn't actually seen him pour liquid into the radio, he could say that it was in this man's roomette that he had awakened bound and gagged, and he could say that it was this man who had attacked Titmuss, when he, Titmuss, went back to plant the flares.

'Was that so? ' they asked me. Could I identify him positively?

'Positively,' I said

They moved on to Sheridan's death. A sad business, they said. Apart from making a record of the time of the occurrence and the various radio messages, there was little to be done. The family had made no complaint to or about the railway company Any other conclusions would have to be reached at the official inquest.

'That wasn't too bad, eh?'.' George said afterwards.

'Would you come in uniform to the races?' I asked.

'If that's what you want '

'Yes, please ' I gave him a card with directions and instructions and a pass cajoled from Nell to get him in through the gates.

'See you tomorrow, eh?'

I nodded 'At eleven o'clock.'

We went our different ways, and with some reluctance but definite purpose I sought out a doctor recommended by the hotel and presented myself for inspection

The doctor was thin, growing old and inclined to make jokes over his half-moon glasses.

'Ah,' he said, when I'd removed my shirt. 'Does it hurt when you cough? '

'It hurts when I do practically anything, as a matter of fact.'

'We'd better have a wee X-ray then, don't you think?'

I agreed to the X-ray and waited around for ages until he reappeared with a large sheet of celluloid which he clipped in front of a light.

'Well, now,' he said, 'the good news is that we don't have any broken ribs or chipped vertebrae.'

'Fine.' I was relieved and perhaps a bit surprised.

‘What we do have is a fractured shoulder blade.'

I stared at him. 'I didn't think that was possible.'

'Anything's possible,' he said 'See that,' he pointed, 'that's a real grand-daddy of a break Goes right across, goes right through The bottom part of your left scapula,' he announced cheerfully, 'is to all intents and purposes detached from the top '

'Um,' I said blankly. 'What do we do about it?'

He looked at me over the half-moons. 'Rivets,' he said, 'might be extreme, don't you think' Heavy strapping, immobility for two weeks, that'll do the trick.'

'What about,' I said, 'if we do nothing at all? Will it mend? '

'Probably. Bones are remarkable. Young bones especially. You could try a sling. You'd be more comfortable though, if you let me strap your arm firmly skin to skin to your side and chest, under your shirt.'

I shook my head and said I wanted to go on a sort of honeymoon to Hawaii.

'People who go on honeymoons with broken bones,' he said with a straight face, 'must be ready to giggle '

I giggled there and then I asked him for a written medical report and the X-ray, and paid him for them, and bore away my evidence.

Stopping at a pharmacy on my way back to the hotel, I bought an elbow-supporting sling made of wide black ribbon, which I tried on for effect in the shop, and which made things a good deal better. I was wearing it when I opened my door in the evening, first to the Brigadier on his arrival from Heathrow, and then to Bill Baudelaire, from Toronto.

Bill Baudelaire looked around the sitting room and commented to the Brigadier about the lavishness of my expense account.

'Expense account, my foot!' the Brigadier said, drinking my Scotch. 'He's paying for it himself.'

Bill Baudelaire looked shocked. 'You can't let him,' he said.

'Didn't he tell you?' the Brigadier laughed. 'He's as rich as Croesus.'

'No… he didn't tell me.'

'He never tells anybody. He's afraid of it.'

Bill Baudelaire, with his carroty hair and pitted skin, looked at me with acute curiosity.

'Why do you do this job?' he said.

The Brigadier gave me no time to answer. 'What else would he do to pass the time? Play backgammon? This game is better. Isn't that it, Tor?'

'This game is better,' I agreed.

The Brigadier smiled. Although shorter than Bill Baudelaire, and older and leaner, and with fairer, thinning hair, he seemed to fill more of the room. I might be three inches taller than he, but I had the impression always of looking up to him, not down.

'To work, then,' he suggested. 'Strategy, tactics, plan of attack.'

He had brought some papers from England, though some were still to come, and he spread them out on the coffee table so that all of us, leaning forward, could see them.

'It was a good guess of yours, Tor, that the report on the cats was a computer print-out, because of its lack of headings. The Master of the college had a call from Mercer Lorrimore at eight this morning… must have been midnight here… empowering him to tell us everything, as you'd asked. The Master gave us the name of the veterinary pathology lab he'd employed and sent us a fax of the letter he'd received from them. Is that the same as the one in Filmer's briefcase, Tor?'.

He pushed a paper across and I glanced at it. 'Identical, except for the headings.'

'Good. The path lab confirmed they kept the letter stored in their computer but they don't know yet how anyone outside could get a print-out. We're still trying. So are they. They don't like it happening.'

'How about a list of their employees,' I said, 'including temporary secretaries or wizard hacker office boys?'

'Where do you get such language?' the Brigadier protested. He produced a sheet of names. 'This was the best they could do.'

I read the list. None of the names was familiar.

'Do you really need to know the connection?' Bill Baudelaire asked.

'It would be neater,' I said.

The Brigadier nodded. 'John Millington is working on it. We're talking to him by telephone before tomorrow's meeting. Now, the next thing,' he turned to me. 'That conveyance you saw in the briefcase. As you suggested, we checked the number SF 90155 with the Land Registry.' He chuckled with all George Burley's enjoyment. 'That alone would have been worth your trip.'

He explained why. Bill Baudelaire said, 'We've got him, then,' with great satisfaction: and the joint Commanders-in-Chief began deciding in which order they would fire off their accumulated salvoes.

Julius Apollo walked into a high-up private room in Exhibition Park racecourse on Tuesday morning to sign and receive, as he thought, certification that he was the sole owner of Laurentide Ice, which would run in his name that afternoon.

The room was the President of the racecourse's conference room, having a desk attended by three comfortable armchairs at one end, with a table surrounded by eight similar chairs at the other. The doorway from the passage was at mid-point between the groupings, so that one turned right to the desk, left to the conference table. A fawn carpet covered the floor, horse pictures covered the walls, soft yellow leather covered the armchairs: a cross between comfort and practicality, without windows but with interesting spot-lighting from recesses in the ceiling.

When Filmer entered, both of the Directors of Security were sitting behind the desk, with three senior members of the Vancouver Jockey Club and the British Columbia Racing Commission seated at the conference table. They were there to give weight to the proceedings and to bear witness afterwards, but they had chosen to be there simply as observers, and they had agreed not to interrupt with questions. They would take notes, they said, and ask questions afterwards, if necessary.

Three more people and I waited on the other side of a closed door which led from the conference table end of the room into a serving pantry, and from there out again into the passage.

When Filmer arrived I went along the passage and locked the door he had come in by, and put the key in the pocket of my grey raincoat, which I wore buttoned to the neck. Then I walked back along the passage and into the serving pantry where I stood quietly behind the others waiting there.

A microphone stood on the desk in front of the Directors, with another on the conference table, both of them leading to a tape recorder. Out in the serving pantry, an amplifier quietly relayed everything that was said inside.

Bill Baudelaire's deep voice greeted Filmer, invited him to sit in the chair in front of the desk, and said, 'You know Brigadier Catto, of course?'

As the two men had glared at each other times without number, yes, he knew him.

'And these other gentlemen are from, the Jockey Club and Racing Commission here in Vancouver.'

'What is this?' Filmer asked truculently. 'All I want is some paperwork. A formality.'

The Brigadier said, 'We are taking this opportunity to make some preliminary enquiries into some racing matters, and it seemed best to do it now, as so many of the people involved are in Vancouver at this time '

'What are you talking about?' Filmer said.

'We should explain,' the Brigadier said smoothly, 'that we are recording what is said in this room this morning. This is not a formal trial or an official enquiry, but what is said here may be repeated at any trial or enquiry in the future. We would ask you to bear this in mind.'

Filmer said strongly, 'I object to this.'

'At any future trial or Jockey Club enquiry,' Bill Baudelaire said, 'you may of course be accompanied by a legal representative We will furnish you with a copy of the tape of this morning's preliminary proceedings which you may care to give to your lawyer '

'You can't do this,' Filmer said 'I'm not staying.'

When he went to the door he had entered by, he found it locked.

'Let me out,' Filmer said furiously 'You can't do this '

In the serving pantry Mercer Lorrimore took a deep breath, opened the door to the conference room, went through and closed it behind him.

'Good-morning, Julius,' he said.

'What are you doing here? ' Filmer's voice was surprised but not overwhelmingly dismayed. 'Tell them to give me my paper and he done with it '

'Sit down, Julius,' Mercer said He was speaking into the conference table microphone, his voice sounding much louder than Filmer's 'Sit down by the desk.'

'The preliminary enquiry, Mr Filmer,' the Brigadier's voice said, 'is principally into your actions before and during, and in conjunction with, the journey of the race train.' There was a pause, presumably a wait for Filmer to settle. Then the Brigadier's voice again, 'Mr Lorrimore… may I ask you? '

Mercer cleared his throat. 'My son Sheridan,' he said evenly, 'who died two days ago, suffered intermittently from a mental instability which led him sometimes to do bizarre… and unpleasant things '

There was a pause. No words from Filmer.

Mercer said, 'To his great regret, there was an incident of that sort, back in May Sheridan killed… some animals. The bodies were taken from where they were found by a veterinary pathologist who then performed private autopsies on them ' He paused again. The strain was clear in his voice, but he didn't falter. 'You, Julius, indicated to my family on the train that you knew about this incident, and three of us… my wife Bambi, my son Sheridan and myself… all understood during that evening that you would use Sheridan's regrettable act as leverage to get hold of my horse, Voting Right.'

Filmer said furiously, 'That damned play!'

'Yes,' Mercer said. 'It put things very clearly. After Sheridan died, I gave permission to the Master of my son's college, to the British Jockey Club Security Service, and to the veterinary pathologist himself, to find out how that piece of information came into your possession.'

'We did find out,' the Brigadier said, and repeated what a triumphant John Millington had relayed to us less than an hour ago. 'It happened by chance… by accident. You, Mr Filmer, owned a horse, trained in England at Newmarket, which died. You suspected poison of some sort and insisted on a post-mortem, making your trainer arrange to have some organs sent to the path lab. The lab wrote a letter to your trainer saying there was no foreign substance in the organs, and at your request they later sent a copy of the letter to you. One of their less bright computer operators had meanwhile loaded your letter on to a very private disc which she shouldn't have used, and in some way chain-loaded it, so that you received not only a copy of your letter but copies of three other letters besides, letters which were private and confidential.' The Brigadier paused. 'We know this is so,' he said, 'because when one of our operators asked the lab to print out a copy for us, your own letter and the others came out attached to it, chain-loaded into the same secret document name.'

The pathologist, Millington had said, was in total disarray and thinking of scrapping the lab's computer for a new one. 'But it wasn't the computer,' he said. 'It was a nitwit girl, who apparently thought the poison enquiry on the horse was top secret also, and put it on the top-secret disc. They can't sack her, she left weeks ago.'

'Could the pathologist be prosecuted for the cover-up?' the Brigadier had asked.

'Doubtful,' Millington had said, 'now that Sheridan's dead.'

Filmer's voice, slightly hoarse, came out of the loudspeaker into the pantry. 'This is rubbish.'

'You kept the letter,' the Brigadier said. 'It was dynamite, if you could find who it referred to. No doubt you kept all three of the letters, though the other two didn't concern criminal acts. Then you saw one day in your local paper that Mercer Lorrimore was putting up money for a new college library. And you would have had to ask only one question to find out that Mercer Lorrimore's son had left that college in a hurry during May. After that, you would have found that no one would say why. You became sure that the letter refered to Sheridan Lorrimore. You did nothing with your information until you heard that Mercer Lorrimore would be on the Transcontinental Race Train, and then you saw an opportunity of exploring the possibility of blackmailing Mr Lorrimore into letting you have his horse, Voting Right.'

'You can't prove any of this,' Filmer said defiantly.

'We all believe,' said Bill Baudelaire's voice, 'that with you, Mr Filmer, it is the urge to crush people and make them suffer that sets you going. We know you could afford to buy good horses. We know that for you simply owning horses isn't enough.'

'Save me the sermon,' Filmer said. 'And if you can't put up, shut up.'

'Very well,' the Brigadier said. 'We'll ask our next visitor to come in, please.'

Daffodil Quentin, who was standing beside George in the pantry and had been listening with parted mouth and growing anger, opened the dividing door dramatically and slammed it shut behind her.

'You unspeakable toad,' her voice said vehemently over the loudspeaker.

Attagirl, I thought.

She was wearing a scarlet dress and a wide shiny black belt and carrying a large shiny black handbag. Under the high curls and in a flaming rage, she attacked as an avenging angel in full spate.

'I will never give you or sell you my half of Laurentide Ice,' she said forcefully, 'and you can threaten and blackmail until you're blue in the face. You can frighten my stable lad until you think you're God Almighty, but you can't from now on frighten me-and I think you're contemptible and should be put in a zoo.'