There was a short silence.
'Well, well, well,' I said blankly. 'It looks as though I was luckier than Bill.'
'I wish you could remember something about it- anything. What made you suspect you would fall?' asked Lodge.
'I don't know.'
'It was something that happened while you were in the parade ring waiting to mount.' He leaned forward, his dark eyes fixed intently on my face, willing my sluggish memory to come to life. But I remembered nothing, and I still felt weary from head to foot. Concentration was altogether too much of an effort.
I looked out into the peaceful spring garden. Scilla held an armful of forsythia, golden yellow against her blue dress.
'I can't remember,' I said flatly. 'Perhaps it'll come back when my head stops aching.'
Lodge sighed and sat back in his hard chair.
'I suppose,' he said, a little bitterly, 'that you do at least remember sending me a message from Brighton, asking me to do your investigating for you?'
'Yes, I do,' I said. 'How did you get on?'
'Not very well. No one seems to know who actually owns the Marconicar taxi line. It was taken over just after the war by a business man named Clifford Tudor-'
'What?' I said in astonishment.
'Clifford Tudor, respectable Brighton resident, British subject. Do you know him?'
'Yes,' I said. 'He owns several racehorses.'
Lodge sorted out a paper from his briefcase. 'Clifford Tudor, born Khroupista Thasos, in Trikkala, Greece. Naturalized nineteen thirty-nine, when he was twenty-five. He started life as a cook, but owing to natural business ability he acquired his own restaurant that same year. He sold it for a large profit after the war, went to Brighton, and bought for next to nothing an old taxi business that had wilted from wartime restrictions and lack of petrol. Four years ago he sold the taxis, again at a profit, and put his money into the Pavilion Plaza Hotel. He is unmarried.'
I leaned my head back against the window and waited for these details to mean something significant, but all that happened was that my inability to think increased.
Lodge went on. 'The taxi line was bought from Tudor by nominees, and that's where the fog begins. There have been so many transfers of ownership from company to company, mostly through nominees who can't be traced, that no one can discover who is the actual present owner. All business matters are settled by a Mr Fielder, the manager. He says he consults with a person he calls the Chairman by telephone, but that the Chairman rings him up every morning, and never the other way round. He says the Chairman's name is Claud Thiveridge, but he doesn't know his address or telephone number.'
'It sounds very fishy to me,' said my father.
'It is,' said Lodge. There is no Claud Thiveridge on the electoral register, or in any other official list, including the telephone accounts department, in the whole of Kent, Surrey, or Sussex. The operators in the telephone exchange are sure the office doesn't receive a long distance call regularly every morning, yet the morning call has been standard office routine for the last four years.
As this means that the call must be a local one, it seems fairly certain that Claud Thiveridge is not the gentleman's real name.'
He rubbed the palm of his hand round the back of his neck and looked at me steadily. 'You know a lot more than you've told me, amnesia or not,' he said. 'Spill the beans, there's a good chap.'
'You haven't told me what the Brighton police think of the Marconicars,' I said.
Lodge hesitated. 'Well, they were a little touchy on the subject, I would say. It seems they have had several complaints, but not much evidence that will stand up in court. What I have just told you is the result of their inquiries over the last few years.'
'They would not seem,' said my father dryly, 'to have made spectacular progress. Come on, Alan, tell us what's going on.'
Lodge turned his head towards him in surprise. My father smiled.
'My son is Sherlock Holmes reincarnated, didn't you know?' he said. 'After he went to England I had to employ a detective to do the work he used to do in connexion with frauds and swindles. As one of my head clerks put it, Mr Alan has an unerring instinct for smelling out crooks.'
'Mr Alan's unerring instinct is no longer functioning,' I said gloomily. Clouds were building up near the sun, and Scilla's back disappeared through the macrocarpa hedge by the kitchen door.
'Don't be infuriating, Alan,' said my father. 'Elucidate.'
'Oh, all right.' I stubbed out my cigarette, began to scratch my cheek, and dragged my fingers away from the scar with a strong effort of will. It went on itching.
'There's a lot I don't know,' I said, 'but the general gist appears to be this. The Marconicars have been in the protection racket for the last four years, intimidating small concerns like caf‚s and free house pubs. About a year ago, owing to the strongmindedness of one particular publican, mine host of The Blue Duck, business in the protection line began to get, 'unexpectedly rough for the protectors. He set Alsatians on them, in fact.' I told my fascinated father and'an aghast Lodge what Kate and I had learned in The Blue Duck's kitchen, carefully watched by the yellow-eyed Prince.
'Ex-Regimental Sergeant-Major Tnomkins made such serious inroads into the illicit profits of Marconicars,' I continued, 'that as a racket it was more or less defunct. The legitimate side hasn't been doing too well during the winter either, according to the typists who work in the office. There are too many taxis in Brighton for the number of fares at this time of year, I should think. Anyway, it seems to me that the Marconicar boss – the Chairman, your mysterious Claud Thiveridge – set about mending his fortunes by branching out into another form of crime. He bought, I think, the shaky bookmaking business on the floor above the Marconicars, in the same building.'
I could almost smell the cabbage in the Olde Oake caf‚ as I remembered it. 'An earnest lady told me the bookmakers had been taken over by a new firm about six months ago, but that its name was still the same. L. C. Perth, written in neon. She was very wrought up about them sticking such a garish sign on an architectural gem, and she and her old buildings society, whose name I forget, had tried to reason with the new owners to take down what they had just put up. Only they couldn't find out who the new owner was. It's too much of a coincidence to have two businesses, both shady, one above the other, both with invisible and untraceable owners. They must be owned by the same person.'
'It doesn't follow, and I don't see the point,' said my father.
'You will in a minute,' I said. 'Bill died because he wouldn't stop his horse winning a race. I know his death wasn't necessarily intended, but force was used against him. He was told not to win by a husky-voiced man on the telephone. Henry, Bill's elder son, he's eight-' I explained to Lodge, 'has a habit of listening on the extension upstairs, and he heard every word. Two days before Bill died, Henry says, the voice offered him five hundred pounds to stop his horse winning, and when Bill laughed at this, the voice told him he wouldn't win because his horse would fall.'
I paused, but neither Lodge nor my father said anything. Swallowing the last of the brandy, I went on. 'There is a jockey called Joe Nantwich who during the last six months, ever since L. C. Perth changed hands, has regularly accepted a hundred pounds, sometimes more, to stop a horse winning. Joe gets his instructions by telephone from a husky-voiced man he has never met.'
Lodge stirred on his hard, self-chosen chair.