He said almost beseechingly, with difficulty, 'it wasn't you, was it, who had Moira… Or me, in the garage…? Say it wasn't you.'
I didn't know really how to convince him. He'd known me better, lived with me longer than with any of his other children, and if his trust was this fragile then there wasn't much future between us.
'I didn't have Moira killed,' I said. 'if you believe it of me, you could believe it of yourself.' I paused. 'I don't want you dead, I want you alive. I could never do you harm.'
It struck me that he really needed to hear me say I loved him, so although he might scoff at the actual words, and despite the conditioned inhibitions of my upbringing, I said, feeling that desperate situations needed desperate remedies, 'You're a great father… and… er… I love you.'
He blinked. Such a declaration pierced him, one could see. I'd probably overdone it, I thought, but his distrust had been a wound for me too.
I said much more lightly, 'I swear on the Coochie Pembroke Memorial Challenge Trophy that I would never touch a hair on your head… nor Moira's either, though I did indeed loathe her.'
I lifted the suitcase off the bed.
'Do I go on with you or not?' I said. 'if you don't trust me, I'm going home.'
He was looking at me searchingly, as if I were a stranger, which I suppose in some ways I was. He had never before, I guessed, had to think of me not as a son but as a man, as a person who had led a life separate from his, with a different outlook, different desires, different values. Sons grew from little boys into their own adult selves: fathers tended not to see the change clearly. Malcolm, I was certain, thought of me basically as still having the half-formed personality I'd had at fifteen.
'You're different,' he said.
'I am the same. Trust your instinct.'
Some of the tension at last slackened in his muscles. His instinct had been trust, an instinct strong enough to carry him to the telephone after three silent years.
He finished the scotch and stood up, filling his lungs with a deep breath as if making resolves.
'Come with me then,' he said.
I nodded.
He went over to the chest of drawers and from the bottom drawer, which I hadn't checked, produced a briefcase. I might have guessed it would be there somewhere: even in the direst panic, he wouldn't have left behind the lists of his gold shares or his currency exchange calculator. He started with the briefcase to the door, leaving me to bring the suitcase, but on impulse I went over again to the telephone and asked for a taxi to be ready for us.
'But your car's here,' Malcolm said.
'Mm. I think I'll leave it here, for now.'
'But why?'
'Because if I didn't tell anyone you were going to Newmarket Sales, and nor did you, then it's probable you were followed there, from… er… here. If you think about it… the car that tried to kill you was waiting in the sales car-park, but you didn't have a car. You went there by taxi. Whoever drove at you must have seen you and Me togetherand known who I was, and guessed you might leave with me, so although I didn't see anyone following us tonight from Newmarket, whoever-it-was probably knew we would come here, to this hotel, so… well… so they Might be hanging about in the courtyard where we parked, where it's nice and dark outside the back door, waiting to see if we come out again.'
'my God!'
'It'S possible,' I said. 'So we'll leave through the front door, with the doorman in attendance, don't you think?'
'If you say so,' he said weakly.
'From now on,' I said, 'we take every exaggerated precaution we can think of.'
'Well, where are we going in this taxi?'
'How about somewhere where we can rent a car?'
The taxi-driver, however, once we'd set off without incident from the hotel, bill paid, luggage loaded, doorman tipped, informed us doubtfully that nine o'clock on a Tuesday night wasn't going to be easy. All the car-hire firms' offices would be closed.
'Chauffeur-driven car, then,' Malcolm said. 'Fellows who do weddings, that sort of thing. Twenty quid in it for you if you fix it.'
Galvanised by this offer, the taxi-driver drove us down some back streets, Stopped outside an unpromising little terraced house and banged on the door. It opened, shining out a melon-slice of light, and gathered the taxi- driver inside.
'We're going to be mugged,' Malcolm said.
The taxi-driver returned harmlessly, howeveraccompanied by a larger man buttoning the jacket of a chauffeur's uniform and carrying a reassuring peaked cap.
'The firm my brother-in-law works for does mostly weddings and funerals,' the taxi-driver said. 'He wants to know where you want to go.'
' London,' I said.
London appeared to be no problem at all. The driver and his brother-in-law climbed into the front of the taxi which started off, went round a corner or two, and pulled up again outside a lock-up garage. We sat in the taxi as asked while the two drivers opened the garage, disclosing its contents. Which was how Malcolm and I Proceeded to London in a very large highly-polished black Rolls-Royce, the moonlighting chauffeur separated from us discreetly by a glass partition.
'Why did You go to the sales at all?'I asked Malcolm. 'I mean, why Newmarket? Why the sales?'
Malcolm frowned. 'Because of Ebury's, I suppose.'
'The jewellers?'
'Yes… well… I knew they were going to have a showroom there. They told me so last week when I went to see them about Coochie's jewellery. I mean, I know them pretty well, I bought most of her things from there. I was admiring a silver horse they had, and they said they were exhibiting this week at Newmarket Sales. So then yesterday when I was wondering what would fetch you… where you would meet me… I remembered the sales were so close to Cambridge, and I decided on it not long before I rang you.'
I pondered a bit. 'How would you set about finding where someone was, if you wanted to, so to speak?'
To my surprise he had a ready answer. 'Get the fellow I had for tailing Moira.'
'Tailing…' 'My lawyer said to do it. It might save me something, he said, if Moira was having a bit on the side, see what I mean?'
'I do indeed,' I agreed dryly. 'But I suppose she wasn't?'
'No such luck.' He glanced at me. 'What do you have in mind?'
'Well… I just wondered if he could check where everyone in the family was last Friday and tonight.'
'Everyone!' Malcolm exclaimed. 'It would take weeks.'
'it would put your mind at rest.'
He shook his head gloomily. 'You forget about assassins.'
'Assassins aren't so frightfully easy to find, not for ordinary people. How would you set about it, for instance, if you wanted someone killed? Put an ad in The Times?'
He didn't seem to see such a problem as I did, but he agreed that 'the fellow who tailed Moira' should be offered the job of checking the family.
We discussed where we should stay that night: in which hotel, in fact, as neither of us felt like returning home. Home, currently, to me, was a rather dull suburban flat in Epsom, not far from the stable I'd been working for. Home for Malcolm was still the house where I'd been raised, from which Moira had apparently driven him, but to which he had returned immediately after her death. 'Home' for all the family was that big house in Berkshire which had seen all five wives come and go: Malcolm himself had been brought up there, and I could scarcely imagine what he must have felt at the prospect of losing it.
'What happened between you and Moira?' I said.
'None of your goddam business.'
We travelled ten miles in silence. Then he shifted, sighed, and said, 'She wanted Coochie's jewellery and I
