“You’ve a lot to learn.”
We were sitting by a window. I looked through it to the Range Rover parked outside in plain view and reckoned that one way or another I actually had learned a lot that morning, and that what I’d learned had probably saved a good many votes.
My father, as if following my thoughts, said lightly, “We’ll talk about it later,” but it wasn’t until we were changing before going to the Town Hall debate that he would discuss Foster Fordham.
By then I’d persuaded Mervyn to arrange a securely locked overnight garage for the Range Rover, backed by my casual parent who said mildly, “The boy’s got a point, Mervyn. It might be more satisfactory for us all. No harm, anyway, in keeping it safe from thieves,” and as the car belonged to my father himself and not to the party, he had his way.
“Foster Fordham wasn’t sure how much you understood,” he said, combing through his tightly curled dark hair and leaving it much as it had been before. “He was surprised you didn’t ask him questions.”
“Terry — the mechanic — did ask. Fordham wouldn’t answer.”
“So what do you conclude it was all about?”
“Well... if you or I or anyone else had driven the Range Rover yesterday towards Quindle, it would quite likely have crashed. Or, at least, I think so.”
My father put down his comb and with stillness said, “Go on.”
I said, “I do think the bullet that came so near us was deliberately aimed at you, and even if it hadn’t killed you, it would have stopped your campaign if you’d been badly injured. But all the town could see that all you’d done was twist your ankle. So if anyone was looking around for another way to put a stopper on you, there was the Range Rover, just standing there unguarded all night in the parking lot, conspicuously yours and painted with silver and gold to attract attention.”
“Yes.”
“When I was taking driving lessons, which was mostly in the Easter holidays, I read a lot of motoring magazines...”
“I thought you were supposed to be revising for your A levels, your university entrance exams.”
“Um... I was riding for Sir Vivian, too. I mean, I can think in algebra. I just had to make sure I understood all the exam questions that have been set before, set in the past. I don’t mean to sound big-headed, really I don’t, but I had sort of a lot of spare mental time, so I read the motor magazines. I didn’t know you had a Range Rover — but I read about them. I read about their anti-thief devices. So when your Range Rover had stood quiet in the parking lot all night, and you had the only keys to disarm the screech alarms, then if anyone had done any harm it had to have been from outside... or underneath...” I tapered off, feeling silly, but he waved for me to go on.
“I thought the brake fluid might have been drained so that the brakes wouldn’t work,” I said. “I thought the tires might have been slashed so that you’d have a blowout when you were going fast. Things come whizzing ’round comers on that road to Quindle... you wouldn’t have much chance in a car out of control, but a Range Rover is pretty well built, like a tank — so you might be unhurt in a crash, but you might kill the people you crashed into... or at least injure them badly... and that would stop you being elected, wouldn’t it?”
My father took his time in moving, and in answering. “It wasn’t the brakes or the tires,” he said.
“It was the engine oil.”
He nodded. “Tell me what you think.”
I said, “I think Fordham knew what was wrong before he came. He said he was an expert in sabotage in motor racing, and nothing about the Range Rover surprised him. It must have seemed pretty elementary to him.”
My father, smiling, said, “I’ve known him a long time. So, what did he tell me?”
This is some sort of test, I thought. I could only guess at answers; but anyhow, I guessed. “Someone unscrewed the sump plug and removed it, and stuffed up the hole so that the oil couldn’t all run out.”
“Go on.”
“The stopper was something that would fall out later, so the oil would all drain out of the engine when it was going along, and the engine would seize up solid, and as it’s a four-wheel drive you wouldn’t be able to steer and you would be like a block of stone in the middle of the road.”
“Not bad.”
“But Terry — the mechanic — pushed the substitute plug right through into the sump like a cork in a bottle, which I honestly don’t think he should have done, and screwed in a new plug before he refilled with clean oil... like I told you on the phone.”
“Mm. So what was the substitute plug made of?” I’d been thinking about it while we drove around the suburbs. I said hesitantly, “To begin with, I thought it would be something chemical that could react with the oil and make it like jelly, or something, so that it couldn’t be pumped ’round the pistons and they would seize up in the cylinders, but that can’t have been right as the plug was in the sump when Foster Fordham drove fast towards Quindle and deliberately made the engine very hot, and he insisted on Terry draining out the clean oil again when it was still hot, so I thought that perhaps the temporary stopper had melted, and Fordham has taken the oil away to see what was in it.”
“Yes,” my father said.
“Because if it had melted away in the sump drain hole when we were on our way to Quindle yesterday, it would have taken only about a minute for all the oil to drain out and ruin the engine. When the oil was hot this morning, when Terry drained it, it ran out as thin as water.”
“Fordham says it’s an old trick. So old, it’s never attempted now in motor racing.”
“Well... what was the plug made of?”
“What would you think?”
I hesitated. “It had to be pretty simple. I mean, almost spur-of-the-moment, after the bullet had missed.”
“So?”
“So how about shoving a candle up the spout, and cutting it off? How about wax?”
My father peacefully tied his unexuberantly striped tie. “Foster Fordham,” he said, “will let us know.”
It was extraordinary, I thought, as we entered the Town Hall for the Bethune face-to-face confrontation, how many people I’d come to recognize in only two days.
Orinda was there, torturing herself, wearing a very short gold dress with a black feather boa that twisted around her neck and arms like the fluffy snake it was named for, and demanded admiring attention. Her green eyes flashed. An emerald-and-diamond bracelet sparkled on her wrist. No one could be unaware of her vibrant attendance.
A pace behind her, as ever, stood her shadow, whose name I remembered with an effort was A. L. Wyvern. A. L., I thought, Anonymous Lover Wyvern. He had looked uninteresting in a dinner jacket at the Sleeping Dragon dinner: in the Town Hall, in a gray suit and a blue shirt, he filled space without making an impression.
Large Mrs. Kitchens, eagle-eyed, in navy blue with purple frills, held tight to “my Leonard’s” arm and succeeded in preventing him from beaming his sickly mustache into Orinda’s airspace. Mrs. Kitchens gave me a cheery wave and a leer — and I would not let her embarrass me.
Mervyn, of course, had arrived with Crystal at his side to take notes. The three witches were helping to seat people, and Dearest Polly, at the sight of us, made an enthusiastic little run in our direction, and bore off my father like a trophy to show him the lectern behind which he was to stand on the platform. Dearest Polly, it seemed, was stage-managing the evening.
As if with a flourish of trumpets the Bethune camp arrived. There was a stir and a rustle in the hall and a sprinkle of clapping. Hooray for adultery, I thought.
Paul Bethune, seen for the first time, was a portly and portentous-looking fifty or so with a double chin and the thinning hair that might in the end confound his chances more thoroughly than a love child. He was accompanied by a busy Mervyn Teck look-alike, who was indeed his agent, and by a nervous woman who looked at the world in general in upward glances from under her eyebrows. She was shown to a seat in the front row of spectators and Dearest Polly, beckoning to me strongly, introduced me to Paul Bethune’s wife, Isobel.