Hot Money Part 32

'Where in the office?' I remembered the jumble in his desk drawer when I'd fetched his pa.s.sport. The whole place was similar.

'On top of some of the books in the breakfront bookcase. Bottom row, right over on the right-hand side, more or less out of sight when the door's closed. On top of the d.i.c.kens.' His face suddenly split intoa huge grin, i remember now, by G.o.d. I put it there because the picture on the tin's lid was The Old Curiosity Shop.'

I rubbed my hand over my face, trying not to laugh. Superintendent Yale was going to love it.

'They're safe enough there,' Malcolm said reasonably, 'behind gla.s.s. I mean, no one can pick them up accidentally, can they? That's where they are.'

I thought it highly likely that that's where they weren't, but I didn't bother to say so. 'The gla.s.s in the breakfront is broken,' I said.

He was sorry about that. It had been his mother's, he said, like all the books.

'When did you see the tin there?' I asked.

'Haven't a clue. Not all that long ago, I wouldn't have thought, but time goes so quickly.'

'Since Moira died?'

He wrinkled his forehead. 'No, probably not. Then, before that, I was away from the house for a week or ten days when I couldn't stand being in the same place with her and she obdurately wouldn't budge. Before that, I was looking for something in a book. Not in d.i.c.kens, a shelf or two higher. Can't remember what book, though I suppose I might if I went back and stood in front of them and looked at the t.i.tles. Altogether, over three months ago, I should say.'

I reflected a bit and drank my coffee. 'I suppose the bookcase must have been moved now and then for redecorating. The books taken out...'

'Don't be ridiculous,' Malcolm interrupted with amus.e.m.e.nt. 'It weighs more than a ton. The books stay inside it. Redecorating goes on around it, and not at all if I can help it. Moira tried to make me take everything out so she could paint the whole office dark green. I stuck my toes in. She had the rest of the house. That room is mine.'

I nodded lazily. It was pleasant in the suns.h.i.+ne. A few people were sunbathing, a child was swimming, a waiter in a white jacket came along with someone else's breakfast. All a long way away from the ruins of Quantum.

From that quiet Sunday morning and on until Wednesday, Malcolm and I led the same remote existence, being driven round Los Angeles and Hollywood and Beverly Hills in a stretch-limousine Malcolm seemed to have hired by the yard, neck-twisting like tourists, goingout to Santa Anita racetrack in the afternoons, dining in restaurants like Le Chardonnay.

I gradually told him what was happening in the family, never pressing, never heated, never too much at one time, stopping at once if he started showing impatience.

'Donald and Helen should send their children to state schools,' he said moderately.

'Maybe they should. But you sent Donald to Marlborough, and you went there yourself. Donald wants the best for his boys. He's suffering to give them what you gave him effortlessly.'

'He's a sn.o.b to choose Eton.'

'Maybe, but the Marlborough fees aren't much less.'

'What if it was Donald and Helen who've been trying to kill me?'

'If they had plenty of money they wouldn't be tempted.'

'You've said that before, or something like it.'

'Nothing has changed.'

Malcolm looked out of the long car's window as we were driven up through the hills of Bel Air on the way to the racetrack.

'Do you see those houses perched on the cliffs, hanging out over s.p.a.ce? People must be mad to live like that, on the edge.'

I smiled. 'You do,' I said.

He liked Santa Anita racetrack immediately and so did I; it would have been difficult not to. Royal palms near the entrances stretched a hundred feet upward, all bare trunks except for the crowning tufts, green fronds against the blue sky. The buildings were towered and rurreted, sea-green in colour, with metal tracery of stylised palm leaves along the balconies and golden shutters over rear-facing windows. It looked more like a chateau than a racecourse, at first sight.

Ramsey Osborn had given Malcolm fistfuls of instructions and introductions and, as always, Malcolm was welcomed as a kindred spirit upstairs in the Club. He was at home from the first minute, belonging to the scene as if he'd been born there. I envied him his ease and didn't know how to acquire it. Maybe time would do it. Maybe millions. Maybe a sense of achievement.

While he talked easily to almost strangers (soon to be cronies) about the mixing of European and American bloodlines in thoroughbreds, I thought of the phone call I'd made at dawn on Monday morning to Superintendent Yale. Because of the eight-hour timedifference, it was already afternoon with him, and I thought it unlikely I would reach him at first try. He was there, however, and came on the line with unstifled annoyance.

'It's a week since you telephoned.'

'Yes, sorry.'

'Where are you?'

'Around,' I said. His voice sounded as clear to me as if he were in the next room, and presumably mine to him, as he didn't at all guess I wasn't in England, i found my father,' I said.

'Oh. Good.'

I told him where Malcolm had stored the detonators. 'On top of The Old Curiosity Shop Old Curiosity Shop, as appropriate.'

There was a shattered silence, i don't believe it,' he said.

'The books are all old and leatherbound cla.s.sics standing in full editions. Poets, philosophers, novelists, all bought years ago by my grandmother. We were all allowed to borrow a book occasionally to read, but we had to put it back. My father had us well trained.'

'Are you saying that anyone who borrowed a book from that bookcase could have seen the detonators?'

'Yes, I suppose so, if they've been there for twenty years.'

'Did you know they were there?'

'No. I didn't read those sort of books much. Spent my time riding.'

Lucy, I thought, had in her teens plunged into poets as a fish into its native sea, but twenty years ago she had been twenty-two and writing her own immortality. None of the rest of us had been scholars. Some of grandmother's books had never been opened.

'It is incredible that when someone thought of making a bomb, the detonators were to hand,' Yale complained.

'Other way round, wouldn't you think?' I said. 'The availability of the detonators suggested the bomb.'

'The pool of common knowledge in your family is infuriating,' he said. 'No one can be proved to have special access to explosives. No one has a reliable alibi... except Mrs Ferdinand... Everyone can make a timing device and nearly all of you have a motive.'

Irritating,' I agreed.

'That's the wrong word,' he said sourly. 'Where's your father?'

'Safe.'

'You can't stay in hiding for ever.'

'Don't expect to see us for a week or two. What chance is there of your solving the case?' Enquiries were proceeding, he said with starch. If I came across any further information, I would please give it to him.

Indeed, I said, I would.

'When I was younger,' he said to my surprise, 'I used to think I had a nose for a villain, that I could always tell. But since then, I've met embezzlers I would have trusted my savings to, and murderers I'd have let marry my daughter. Murderers can look like harmless ordinary people.' He paused. 'Does your family know who killed Moira Pembroke?'

I don't think so.'

'Please enlarge,' he said.

'One or two may suspect they know, but they're not telling. I went to see everyone. No one was even guessing. No one accusing. They don't want to know, don't want to face it, don't want the misery.'

'And you?'

'I don't want the misery either, but I also don't want my father killed, or myself.'

'Do you think you're in danger?'

'Oh, yes,' I said. 'In loco Moira.'

'As chief beneficiary?'

'Something like that. Only I'm not chief, I'm equal. My father made a new will saying so. I've told the family but they don't believe it.'

'Produce the will. Show it to them.'

'Good idea,' I said. 'Thank you.'

'And you,' he paused, 'do you know, yourself?'

'I don't know.'

'Guess, then.'

'Guessing is one thing, proof is another.'

I might remind you it's your duty ...'

'It's not my duty,' I interrupted without heat, 'to go off half-c.o.c.ked. My duty to my family is to get it right or do nothing.'

I said goodbye to him rather firmly and concluded, from his tone as much as his words, that the police had no more information than I had, and perhaps less: that they hadn't managed (if they'd tried) to find out where the grey plastic clock had come from or who had bought it, which was their only lead as far as I could see and a pretty hopeless proposition. It had been a cheap ma.s.s-production clock, probably on sale in droves.

Malcolm said on one of our car journeys, after I'd been telling him about Berenice, 'Vivien, you know, had this thing about sons.'

'But she had a boy first. She had two.'

'Yes, but before Donald was born, she said she wouldn't look at the baby if it was a girl. I couldn't understand it. I'd have liked a girl. Vivien's self-esteem utterly depended on having a boy. She was obsessed with it. You'd have thought she'd come from some dreadful tribe where it really mattered.'

It did matter,' I said. 'And it matters to Berenice. All obsessions matter because of their results.'

'Vivien never loved Lucy, you know,' he said thoughtfully. 'She shoved her away from her. I always thought that was why Lucy got fat and retreated into poetic fantasies.'

'Berenice shoves off her daughters onto her mother as much as she can.'

'Do you think Berenice murdered Moira?' he said doubtfully.

I think she thinks that having more money would make her happier, which it probably would. If you were going to think of any... er... distribution, I'd give it to the wives as well as the husbands. Separately, I mean. So they had independence.'

'Why?' he said.

'Gervase might value Ursula more if she didn't need him financially.'

'Ursula's a mouse.'

'She's desperate.'

'They're all desperate,' he said with irritation, it's all their own faults. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings.'

I dare say,' I said.

'The bell captain at the hotel gave me a tip for the fourth race.'

Back to horses.

Another day, another journey.

Malcolm said, 'What did Serena say, when you saw her?'

'She said you could stuff your money, or words to that effect.'

Malcolm laughed.

'She also said,' I went on, 'that Alicia told her you'd only tried to get custody of her that time so as to be cruel to Alicia.'

'Alicia's a real b.i.t.c.h.'

'She's got a lover, did you know?' I said.

He was thunderstruck. 'Who is he?'

'Someone else's husband, I should think. That's what she likes, isn't it?'

'Don't be so b.l.o.o.d.y accurate.'

Further down the road we were talking about the time-switch clocks, which had been an unwelcome piece of news to him also.

'Thomas was best at making them, wasn't he?' Malcolm said. 'He could do them in a jiffy. They were his idea originally, I think. Serena brought one over for Robin and Peter which Thomas had made for her years ago.'

I nodded. 'A Mickey Mouse clock. It's still there in the playroom.'

'Serena made them a lighthouse of Lego to go with it, I remember.' He sighed deeply. 'I miss Coochie still, you know. The crash happened not long after that.' He shook his head to rid it of sadness. 'What race shall we choose for the Coochie Memorial Trophy? What do you think?'