Rat Race (23 page)

‘I believe so, sir. Yes.’

I put the receiver down, feeling increasingly fearful. Rupert Tyderman’s death put the game into a different league. Lives had been at risk before, in the aeroplanes; the basic callousness was there; but on those occasions the intention had been expressly not to kill. But now, if Carthy-Todd had decided to clear up behind him… if Tyderman’s blunder with Nancy’s
aeroplane, which had led to his uncovering, had also led directly to his death… if Carthy-Todd had stopped Tyderman giving evidence against him… then would he, could he possibly, also kill the simple, honest, truth-spilling Duke…?

He wouldn’t, I thought coldly. He couldn’t.

I didn’t convince myself one little bit.

The Whiteknights had no cause for complaint about the speed at which I took them to Coventry, though they consented only with bad grace when I asked to share their taxi to the races. I parted from them at the main gate and walked back towards the town centre, looking for the office of the Accident Fund. As the Duke had said, it wasn’t far: less than a quarter of a mile.

It was located on the first floor of a small moderately well kept town house which fronted straight on to the pavement. The ground floor seemed to be uninhabited, but the main door stood open and a placard on the wall just inside announced ‘Racegoers’ Accident Fund. Please walk up.’

I walked up. On the first landing there was a wash room, a secretary’s office, and, at the front of the house, a door with a yale lock and a knocker in the shape of a horse’s head. I flipped the knocker a couple of times and the door came abruptly open.

‘Hello,’ said young Matthew, swinging it wide. ‘Uncle was just saying you would miss us. We’re just going along to the races.’

‘Come along in, my dear chap,’ said the Duke’s voice from inside the room.

I stepped into the office. At first sight a plushy one: wall to wall plum coloured carpet, but of penny-pinching quality, two fat looking easy chairs with cheap foam seats, a pair of shoulder high metal filing cabinets and a modern afrormosia desk. The atmosphere of a solid, sober, long established business came exclusively from the good proportions of the bay windowed room, the mouldings round the nineteenth century ceiling, the
carved wood and marble slab of the handsome fireplace, and some dark old gilt framed oils on the walls. The office had been chosen with genius to convince, to reassure, to charm. And as clients of insurance companies seldom if ever visited its office, this one must have been designed to convince, to reassure, to charm only the Duke himself.

The Duke introduced me to the man who had been sitting and who now stood behind the desk.

‘Charles Carthy-Todd… Matthew Shore.’

I shook his hand. He’d seen me before, as I’d seen him. Neither of us gave the slightest sign of it. I hoped he had not distinguished in me the minute subsidence of tension which I saw in him. The tension I felt hadn’t subsided in the slightest.

He was all the Duke had said: a man with good presence, good voice, a thorough-going public school gent. He would have had to have been, to net the Duke; and there were all those silver framed photographs, which the Duke had mentioned, standing around to prove it.

He had dark hair with the merest sprinkling of grey, a compact little moustache, pinkish tan slightly oily-looking skin, and heavy black-framed glasses assisting his greyish blue eyes.

The Duke was sitting comfortably in an armchair in the bay window, his splendid head haloed by the shining day behind. His knees were crossed, his hands relaxed, and he was smoking a cigar. From his general air of pleased well-being, it was easy to see the pride he held in his beautiful benevolent fund. I wished sincerely for his sake that he wasn’t going to have to wake up.

Charles Carthy-Todd sat down and continued with what he had been going to do when I arrived, offering young Matthew a piece of chocolate-covered orange peel from a half empty round red and gold tin. Matthew took it, thanked him, ate it, and watched him with anxious reserve. Like the Duke, I trusted young Matthew’s instinct. All too clearly, it had switched to amber, if not to red. I hoped for all our sakes that he would have the good manners to keep quiet.

‘Give Matthew a proposal form, Charles,’ the Duke said contentedly. ‘That’s what he’s come for, you know, to join the Fund.’

Carthy-Todd obediently rose, crossed to the filing cabinet, pulled open the top drawer, and lifted out two separate sheets of paper. One, it appeared, was the proposal form: the other, a lavishly curlicued certificate of insurance. I filled in the spaces on the ultra-simple proposal while Carthy-Todd inscribed my name and a number on the certificate; then I handed over a fiver, which left me with enough to live on cornflakes until pay day, and the transaction was complete.

‘Take care of yourself now, Matt,’ joked the Duke, and I smiled and said I would.

The Duke looked at his watch. ‘Good gracious!’ He stood up. ‘Come along now, everybody. Time we went along to the racecourse. And no more excuses, Charles, I insist on you lunching with me.’ To me he explained, ‘Charles very rarely goes to the races. He doesn’t much care for it, do you see? But as the course is so very close…’

Carthy-Todd’s aversion to race meetings was to my mind completely understandable. He wished to remain unseen, anonymous, unrecognisable, just as he’d been all along. Charles would choose which meetings he went to very carefully indeed. He would never, I imagined, turn up without checking with the Duke whether he was going to be there too.

We walked back to the racecourse, the Duke and Carthy-Todd in front, young Matthew and me behind. Young Matthew slowed down a little and said to me in a quiet voice, ‘I say, Matt, have you noticed something strange about Mr Carthy-Todd?’

I glanced at his face. He was half anxious, half puzzled, wanting reassurance.

‘What do you think is strange?’

‘I’ve never seen anyone before with eyes like that.’

Children were incredibly observant. Matthew had seen naturally what I had known to look for.

‘I shouldn’t mention it to him. He might not care for it.’

‘I suppose not.’ He paused. ‘I don’t frightfully like him.’

‘I can see that.’

‘Do you?’

‘No,’ I said.

He nodded in satisfaction. ‘I didn’t think you would. I don’t know why Uncle’s so keen on him. Uncle,’ he added dispassionately, ‘doesn’t understand about people. He thinks everyone is as nice as he is. Which they’re not.’

‘How soon can you become his business manager?’

He laughed. ‘I know all about trustees. I’ve got them. Can’t have this and can’t do that, that’s all they ever say, Mother says.’

‘Does your Uncle have trustees?’

‘No, he hasn’t. Mother’s always beefing on about Uncle not being fit to control all that lucre and one day he’ll invest the lot in a South Sea Bubble. I asked Uncle about it and he just laughed. He told me he has a stockbroker who sees to everything and Uncle just goes on getting richer and when he wants some money for something he just tells the stockbroker and he sells some shares and sends it along. Simple. Mother fusses over nothing. Uncle won’t get into much trouble about money because he knows that he doesn’t know about it, if you see what I mean?’

‘I wouldn’t like him to give too much to Mr Carthy-Todd,’ I said.

He gave me a flashing look of understanding. ‘So that’s what I felt.… Do you think it would do any good if I sort of tried to put Uncle off him a bit?’

‘Couldn’t do much harm.’

‘I’ll have a go,’ he said. ‘But he’s fantastically keen on him.’ He thought deeply and came up with a grin. ‘I must say,’ he said, ‘That he has awfully good chocolate orange peel.’

Annie Villars was upset about Kenny Bayst. ‘I went to sec him for a few moments this morning. He’s broken both legs
and his face was cut by flying glass. He won’t be riding again before next season, he says. Luckily he’s insured with the Racegoers’ Fund. Sent them a tenner, he told me, so he’s hoping to collect two thousand pounds at least. Marvellous thing, that Fund.’

‘Did you join?’

‘I certainly did. After that bomb. Didn’t know it was Rupert, then, of course. Still, better to do things at once rather than put them off, don’t you agree?’

‘Were Kitch and the stable lads insured too, do you know?’

She nodded. ‘They were all Kitch’s own lads. He’d advised them all to join. Even offered to deduct the premium from their wages bit by bit. Everyone in Newmarket is talking about it, saying how lucky it was. All the stable lads in the town who hadn’t already joined are sending their fivers along in the next few days.’

I hesitated. ‘Did you read about Rupert Tyderman in the
Sporting Life
?’

A twinge of regret twisted her face: her mouth for the first time since I had known her took on a soft curve that was not consciously constructed.

‘Poor Rupert.… What an end, to be murdered.’

‘There isn’t any doubt, then?’

She shook her head. ‘When I saw the report, I rang the local newspaper down at Kemble… that’s where they found him. He was lying, they said, at the bottom of an embankment near a road bridge over the railway. The local theory is that he could have been brought there by car during the night, and not fallen from a train at all…’ She shook her head in bewilderment. ‘He had one stab wound below his left shoulder-blade, and he had been dead for hours and hours when he was found.’

It took a good deal of lying-in-wait to catch the Duke without Carthy-Todd at his elbow, but I got him in the end.

‘I’ve left my wallet in the Accident Fund office,’ I said.
‘Must have left it on the desk when I paid my premium…. Do you think, sir, that you could let me have a key, if you have one, so that I can slip along and fetch it?’

‘My dear chap, of course.’ He produced a small bunch from his pocket and sorted out a bright new yale. ‘Here you are. That’s the one.’

‘Very kind, sir. I won’t be long.’ I took a step away and then turned back, grinning, making a joke.

‘What happens, sir, if it’s you who gets killed in a car crash? What happens to the Fund then?’

He smiled back reassuringly in a patting-on-the-shoulder avuncular manner. ‘All taken care of, my dear chap. Some of the papers I signed, they dealt with it. The Fund money would be guaranteed from a special arrangement with my estate.’

‘Did Charles see to it?’

‘Naturally. Of course. He understands these things, you know.’

Between the Duke and the main gate a voice behind me crisply shouted.

‘Matt.’

I stopped and turned. It was Colin, hurrying towards me, carrying the saddle from the loser he’d partnered in the first race.

‘Can’t stop more than a second,’ he said. ‘Got to change for the next. You weren’t leaving, were you? Have you seen Nancy?’

‘No. I’ve been looking. I thought… perhaps…’

He shook his head. ‘She’s here. Up there, on the balcony, with Midge.’

I followed where he was looking, and there they were, distant, high up, talking with their heads together, two halves of one whole.

‘Do you know which is Nancy?’ Colin asked.

I said without hesitation, ‘The one on the left.’

‘Most people can’t tell.’

He looked at my expression and said with exasperation, ‘If you feel like that about her, why the bloody hell don’t you
let her know? She thinks she made it all up… she’s trying to hide it but she’s pretty unhappy.’

‘She’d have to live on peanuts.’

‘For crying out loud, what does that matter? You can move in with us. We all want you. Midge wants you… and now, not some distant time when you think you can afford it. Time for us is now, this summer. There may not be much after this.’ He hitched the saddle up on his arm and looked back towards the weighing room. ‘I’ll have to go. We’ll have to talk later. I came after you now, though, because you looked as though you were leaving.’

‘I’m coming back soon.’ I turned and walked along with him towards the weighing-room. ‘Colin… I ought to tell someone… you never know…’ He gave me a puzzled glance and in three brief sentences I told him why the Accident Fund was a fraud, how he and the bomb had been used to drum up business, and in what way Carthy-Todd was a fake.

He stopped dead in his tracks. ‘Good God,’ he said. ‘The Fund was such a great idea. What a bloody shame.’

Saturday afternoon. The Board of Trade had gone home to its lawn mowing and the wife and kids. I put down the telephone and considered the police.

The police were there, on the racecourse, all ready and able. But willing? Hardly. They were there to direct the traffic; a crime not yet committed would not shift them an inch.

Both lots, if they believed me, might eventually arrive on Carthy-Todd’s doorstep. By appointment, probably; especially the Board of Trade.

There would be no Carthy-Todd to welcome them in. No records. No Fund. Possibly no Duke…

I always told myself to stay out of trouble.

Never listened.

No clocks ticked in Carthy Todd’s office. The silence was absolute. But it was only in my mind that it was ominous and
oppressive. Carthy-Todd was safe at the races and I should have a clear hour at least: or so my brain told me. My nerves had other ideas.

I found myself tiptoeing across to the desk. Ridiculous. I half laughed at myself and put my feet down flat on the soundless carpet.

Nothing on the desk top except a blotter without blots, a tray of pens and pencils, a green telephone, a photograph of a woman, three children and a dog in a silver frame, a desk diary, closed, and the red and gold tin of chocolate orange peel.

The drawers contained stationery, paper clips, stamps, and a small pile of the ‘insure against bombs on the way home’ brochures. Two of the four drawers were completely empty.

Two filing cabinets. One unlocked. One locked. The top of the three drawers of the unlocked cabinet contained the packets of proposal forms and insurance certificates, and a third packet containing claim forms; in the second, the completed and returned forms of those insured, filed in a rank of folders from A–Z; and the third, almost empty, contained three folders only, one marked ‘Claims settled’; one ‘Claims pending’, and the other ‘Receipts.’