“No.” His reply was positive, his manner shifty.
“Was the brown-paper parcel you gave me at Cheltenham the selfsame one that Martin gave you earlier in the day?”
“Yes.” He nodded this time with no need for thought. “It was the same one. Rose was furious. She said I should have stuck onto it when Martin died, and I shouldn’t have mentioned it; we should have kept it ourselves and then there wouldn’t have been all this fuss.”
“Did Rose know what was in it?”
“Only Martin knew for sure. I did more or less ask him what was in it but he just laughed and said the future of the world, but it was a joke, of course.”
Martin’s joke sounded to me too real to be funny.
Ed hadn’t finished. “A couple of weeks before Christmas,” he said, still amused, “Martin said that what he was giving Bon-Bon — a few of the jockeys were talking about presents for their wives and girlfriends while they were changing to go home — it wasn’t a big deal — what he was giving Bon-Bon was a gold-and-glass antique necklace, but he was laughing and he said he would have to get you to make him a much cheaper and modern copy. He said you had a videotape to tell you how. But next minute he changed his mind because Bon-Bon wanted new fur-lined boots, and anyway he was mostly talking about the King George VI Chase at Kempton on December 26 and how much weight he’d have to take off by not eating turkey... I mean, he was always worried about his weight, like most of them are.”
“He talked to you a lot,” I commented. “More than most.”
Ed didn’t think so. He liked to chat with the boys, he said. He could tell us a thing or two about them. He winked on it, as if all jockeys were real sexual rogues, and with this confidence his manner more or less returned to the calm and efficient valet I’d met through Martin.
Worthington, driving us home, summed up the day’s haul of information. “I’d say Martin and the white-bearded guy were serious with this tape.”
“Yes,” I agreed.
“And somehow or other, through her father, Rose may have imagined that that tape showed how to make an antique necklace.”
I said doubtfully, “It must be more than that.”
“Well... perhaps it actually says where the necklace can be found.”
“A treasure hunt?” I shook my head. “There’s only one valuable antique gold-and-glass necklace that I know of, and I do know a fair amount about antique glass, and it’s in a museum. It’s priceless. It was probably designed in Crete, or anyway somewhere round the Aegean Sea sometime about three thousand five hundred years ago. It’s called the Cretan Sunrise. I did make a copy of it, though, and I once lent it to Martin. I also made a videotape to explain the methods I used. I lent that to Martin too and he still has it — or rather, heaven knows where it is now.”
“What if there’s another one?” Worthington asked.
“Are you talking about two tapes now? Or two necklaces?”
“Why not two tapes?” Worthington reasoned, as if it had suddenly become likely. “Rose could have muddled them up.”
I thought it just as likely that it was Worthington and I who’d muddled everything up, but we arrived safely at Bon-Bon’s house richer with at least two solid new facts: first, that Rose, Norman Osprey and Eddie Payne had spent their Sunday evening in Broadway; and second, that an elderly, thin, white-bearded, university-lecture-type man had walked into my shop as the new century came in with bells, and had not stayed to help Lloyd Baxter with his epileptic fit.
As we scrunched to a halt on Bon-Bon’s gravel, Marigold came with wide-stretched arms out of the front door to greet us.
“Bon-Bon doesn’t need me anymore,” she announced dramatically. “Get out the maps, Worthington. We’re going skiing.”
“Er... when?” her chauffeur asked, unsurprised.
“Tomorrow morning of course. Fill up the gas tanks. We’ll call at Paris on the way. I need new clothes.”
Worthington looked more resigned than I felt. He murmured to me that Marigold bought new clothes most days of the week and prophesied that the skiing trip would last less than ten days overall. She would tire of it quickly, and come home.
Bon-Bon was taking the news of her mother’s departure with well-hidden relief, and asked me with hope whether “the upsetting videotape business” was now concluded. She wanted calm in her life, but I had no idea if she would get it. I didn’t tell her of Rose’s existence or the distinct lack of calm she represented.
I asked Bon-Bon about White-Beard. She said she’d never seen or heard of him. When I explained who he was, she telephoned to Priam Jones, who though with his self-esteem badly hurt by Lloyd Baxter’s ditching of him, regretted he couldn’t help.
Bon-Bon tried several more trainers, but thin, elderly, white-bearded owners of racehorses seemed not to exist. After she’d tired of it she persuaded her mother to let Worthington continue our journey, to take me where I wanted. I kissed her gratefully and chose to go straight home to my hillside house and flop.
Worthington liked skiing, he said as we drove away. He liked Paris. He liked Marigold. He regularly admired her more bizarre clothes. Sorry, he said, about leaving me with the lioness, Rose. Good luck, he said cheerfully.
“I could throttle you,” I said.
While Worthington happily chuckled at the wheel, I switched on my mobile phone again to call Irish at his home to find out how the day had finally gone in the shop, but before I could dial the number the message service called, and the disembodied voice of young Victor W. V. said briefly in my ear, “Send your e-mail address to me at vicv@freenet.com.”
Holy hell, I thought, Victor had things to say. Flopping could wait. The only computer I owned that handled e-mail was in Broadway. Worthington with resignation changed direction, at length stopping by my main glass door and insisting he come in with me, to check the place for black masks and other pests.
The place was empty. No Rose in wait. Worthington returned with me to the Rolls, shook my hand, told me to look after myself and left lightheartedly, again prophesying his swift return well within two weeks.
Almost at once I missed the muscle man, missed him as a safety umbrella and as a source of a realistic view of life. Paris and skiing attracted powerfully. I sighed over my inescapable bruises, roused my sleeping computer into action, connected it to the Internet, and sent an e-mail message to Victor, with my address.
I’d expected to have to wait a good long time to hear from Victor, but almost immediately, which meant he had been sitting at his computer, waiting, the screen of my laptop demanded, “Who are you?”
I typed and sent, “Martin Stukely’s friend.”
He asked, “Name,” and I told him, “Gerard Logan.”
His reply was “What do you want?”
“How did you know Martin Stukely?”
“I’ve known him for years, saw him often at the races with my granddad.”
I wrote, “Why did you send that letter to him? How had you heard of any tape? Please tell me the truth.”
“I heard my aunt telling my mother.”
“How did your aunt know?”
“My aunt knows everything.”
I began to lose faith in his common sense, and I remembered him saying he was playing a game.
“What is your aunt’s name?” I expected nothing much: certainly not the breath-taker that came back.
“My aunt’s name is Rose. She keeps changing her last name. She’s my mother’s sister.” There was barely an interval before his next remark. “I’d better log off now. She’s just come!”
“Wait.” Stunned by that revelation I rapidly typed, “Do you know of a thin old man with a white beard?”
A long time after I’d settled for no answer, three words appeared.