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.
I wandered around, greeting a few people, watching the first race from the trainers' stand, tearing up my losing pari-mutuel ticket, wandering some more, and feeling finally, without any work to do, without any horse to saddle, purposeless. It was an odd feeling. I couldn't remember when I'd last gone racing without being actively involved. Racing wasn't my playground, it was my work; without work it felt hollow.
Vaguely depressed, I returned to Malcolm's eyrie and found him blossoming in his new role as racehorse owner. He was referring to Le Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe familiarly as 'the Arc' as if it hadn't swum into his consciousness a bare half-week earlier and discussing Blue Clancy's future with Ramsey Osborn as if he knew what he was talking about.
'We're thinking of the Breeders' Cup,' he said to me, and I interpreted the glint in his eyes as a frantic question as well as an instant decision.
'if he runs well today,' Osborn put in, qualifying it.
'It's a long way to California,' I said, agreeing with him. 'To the world championships, one might say.'
Malcolm was grateful for the information and far from dismayed by it. Pretty well the opposite, I saw. It would be to California we would go on the way to Australia, I guessed, rather than Singapore.
Lunch seemed to be continuing all afternoon, in the way French lunches do, with tidy circles of chateaubriand appearing, the empty plates to be cleared before small bundles of beans and carrots were served, followed by fresh little cheeses rolled in chopped nuts, and tiny strawberry tart lets with vanilla coul is According to the menu, I had through my absence missed the ecrevisses, the consomme, the crepes de volaille, the salade verte and the sorbet. just as well, I thought, eyeing the friandises which arrived with the coffee. Even amateur jockeys had to live by the scales.
Malcolm and Ramsey Osborn passed mellowly to cognac and cigars and watched the races on television. No one was in a hurry: the Arc was scheduled for five o'clock and digestion could proceed until four- thirty.
Ramsey Osborn told us he came from Stamford, Connecticut, and had made his money by selling sports clothes. 'Baseball caps by the million,' he said expansively. 'I get them made, I sell them to retail outlets. And shoes, shirts, jogging suits, whatever goes. Health is big business, we'd be nowhere without exercise.'
Ramsey looked as if he didn't exercise too much himself, having pads of fat round his eyes, a heavy double chin and a swelling stomach. He radiated goodwill, however and listened with kind condescension as Malcolm said reciprocally that he himself dealt modestly in currency and metal.
Ramsey wasn't grasping Malcolm's meaning, I thought, but then for all his occasional flamboyance Malcolm never drew general attention to his wealth. Quantum was a large comfortable Victorian family house, but it wasn't a mansion: when Malcolm had reached mansion financial status, he'd shown no signs of wanting to move. I
