‘I can’t tell her... What if Nanterre turns up and shoots you?’
‘He won’t,’ I said. ‘But if we don’t catch him...’ I paused. ‘The princess told me today that if Roland signs the arms contract to save us all, he will literally die of shame. He wouldn’t want to go on living. She’s extremely worried that he’ll give in... she loves him... she wants him alive. So we’ve got to stop Nanterre; and stop him soon.’
Danielle didn’t answer for two or three miles, and it was Litsi eventually who broke the silence.
‘I’ll tell Beatrice,’ he said firmly.
‘No,’ Danielle protested.
‘Last night,’ I said, ‘Nanterre killed another of the princess’s horses. The princess doesn’t want Roland to know... or Beatrice, who would tell him.’
They both exclaimed in distress.
‘No wonder she’s been so sad,’ Litsi said. ‘It wasn’t just Helikon falling.’
‘Which horse?’ Danielle asked.
‘Col,’ I said. ‘The one I rode at Ascot.’
‘That didn’t quite win?’ Litsi asked.
‘Yes,’ Danielle said. ‘Her Gold Cup horse.’ She swallowed. ‘If Litsi tells Beatrice Monday’s my last day, I won’t deny it.’
We spent another slightly claustrophobic evening in the house. Roland came down to dinner, and conversation was a trifle stilted owing to everyone having to remember what was not known and shouldn’t be said.
Litsi managed to tell Beatrice positively but naturally that the last time I would be fetching Danielle at night would be Monday, as Danielle would no longer be working in the evenings, a piece of news which surprised the princess greatly.
Beatrice took in the information satisfactorily, with her eyes sliding my way, and one could almost see the cogs clicking as she added the hour to the place.
I wondered if she understood the nature of what I hoped she was going to arrange. She seemed to have no doubts or compunction about laying an ambush which would remove me from her path; but, of course, she didn’t know about the attack on Litsi or about Col’s death, which we couldn’t tell her because either she would instantly apply breaking-point pressure to her brother by informing him, or she would suffer renewed pangs of remorse and not set up the ambush at all.
Beatrice was a real wild card, I thought, who could win us or lose us the game.
Nanterre again didn’t telephone; and there had been no one all day asking about a Bradbury reward.
The advertisements had been prominent in the racing papers for two days, and noticeable in the Towncrier, but either the message-bearer hadn’t seen them or hadn’t thought answering worth while.
Well, I thought in disappointment, going a little painfully to bed, it had seemed a good idea at the time, as Eve no doubt told Adam after the apple.
Dawson buzzed through on the intercom before seven on Sunday morning. Phone call, he said.
Not again, I thought: Christ, not again.
I picked up the receiver with the most fearful foreboding, trying hard not to shake.
‘Look here,’ a voice said, ‘this message from Danielle. I don’t want any trouble, but is this reward business straight up?’
Seventeen
‘Yes,’ I said, dry-mouthed, ‘it is.’
‘How much then?’
I took a deep breath, hardly believing, my heart thumping.
‘Quite a lot,’ I said. ‘It depends how much you can tell me... I’d like to come and see you.’
‘Don’t know about that,’ he said grudgingly.
‘The reward would be bigger,’ I said. ‘And I’d bring it with me.’ Breathing was easier. My hands had stopped trembling.
‘I don’t want any trouble,’ he said.
‘There won’t be any. You tell me where you’ll meet me, and I’ll come.’
‘What’s your name?’ he demanded.
I hesitated fractionally. ‘Christmas,’ I said.
‘Well, Mr Christmas, I’m not meeting you for less than a hundred quid.’ He was belligerent, suspicious and cautious, all in one.
‘All right,’ I said slowly. ‘I agree.’
‘Up front, on the table,’ he said.
‘Yes, all right.’
‘And if I tell you what you want to hear, you’ll double it.’
‘If you tell me the truth, yes.’
‘Huh.’ he said sourly. ‘Right then... you’re in London, aren’t you? That’s a London number.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll meet you in Bradbury,’ he said. ‘In the town, not the racecourse. You get to Bradbury by twelve o’clock, I’ll meet you in the pub there... the King’s Head, half way along the High Street.’
‘I’ll be there,’ I said. ‘How will I know you?’
He thought, breathing heavily. ‘I’ll take the Sporting Life with your ad in it.’
‘And... er... what’s your name?’ I asked.
He had the answer to that question all ready. ‘John Smith,’ he said promptly. ‘I’ll see you, then, Mr Christmas. OK?’
‘OK,’ I said.
He disconnected and I lay back on the pillows feeling more apprehensive than delighted. The fish, I thought, hadn’t sounded securely on the hook. He’d nibbled at the bait, but was full of reservations. I just hoped to hell he’d turn up where and when he’d said, and that he’d be the right man if he did.
His accent had been country English, not broad, just the normal local speech of Berkshire which I heard every day in Lambourn. He hadn’t seemed over-bright or cunning, and the amount he’d asked for, I thought, revealed a good deal about his income and his needs.
Large reward... When I hadn’t objected to one hundred, he’d doubled it to two. But to him, two hundred equated large.
He was a gambler: Litsi had described him as having a sporting paper, a form book and binoculars. What was now certain was that he gambled small, a punter to whom a hundred was a substantial win. I supposed I should be glad he didn’t think of a hundred as a basic stake: a large reward to someone like that might have been a thousand.
Thankfully I set about the business of getting up, which on the mornings after a crunch was always slow and twingy. The icepacks from bedtime had long melted, but the puffball my ankle had swollen to on the previous afternoon had definitely contracted. I took the strapping off, inspected the blackening bruising, and wrapped it up again snugly; and I could still get my shoe on, which was lucky.
In trousers, shirt and sweater I went down by lift to the basement and nicked more ice cubes from the fridge, fastening them into plastic bags and wedging them down inside my sock. Dawson appeared in his dressing-gown to see what was going on in his kitchen and merely raised his eyebrows much as he had the evening before when I’d pinched every ice cube in the house.
‘Did I do right,’ he asked, watching, ‘putting that phone call through to you?’
‘You certainly did.’
‘He said it was to do with the advertisement: he said he was in a hurry as he was using a public telephone.’
‘Was he?’ I pushed the trouser leg down over the loaded sock, feeling the chill strike deep through the strapping.
‘Yes,’ Dawson said, ‘I could hear the pips. Don’t you give yourself frostbite, doing that?’
‘Never have, yet.’
Breakfast, he said a shade resignedly, would be ready in the morning room in half an hour, and I thanked him and spent the interval waking up Litsi, who said bleary-eyed that he was unaccustomed to life before ten on Sunday mornings.
‘We’ve had a tug on the line,’ I explained, and told him about John Smith.
‘Are you sure it isn’t Nanterre setting a trap?’ Litsi said, waking up thoroughly. ‘Don’t forget, Nanterre could have seen that advertisement too. He could be reeling you in, not the other way round... I suppose you did think of that?’