I had a headache, not nausea. My head had collided with the outside of a metal gas cylinder, not with the contents. I felt too lethargic to explain the difference.
Worthington, notwithstanding the muscular physique he painstakingly developed by regular visits to a punch-bag gym, looked pale and shaky and far from well. He held each of the two youngest children by the hand, though, giving them what comfort and confidence he could. In their eyes he could do everything, and they were nearly right.
Bon-Bon had once mentioned that Worthington’s top value to her mother was his understanding of bookmakers’ methods, because, as Marigold herself disliked walking along between the rows of men shouting the odds, Worthington got her the best prices. A versatile and compulsive good guy, Worthington, though he didn’t always look it.
Only Marigold herself was now missing from the sick parade. I asked about her, and the eldest of the children, a boy called Daniel, said she was drunk. She was snoring on the stairs, the elder girl said. So pragmatic, 2000-year children.
While I peeled myself slowly off the wood blocks Bon-Bon, with annoyance, remarked that her doctor had announced he no longer made house calls, even for those recovering from bereavement. He said all would be well with rest and fluid. “Water,” he’d said.
“Gin,” corrected one of the children dryly.
I thought it scandalous that Bon-Bon’s doctor should have refused to tend her and had a go at him myself. Capitulating with apologetic grace, he promised he would “look in,” New Year’s Day holiday notwithstanding. He hadn’t understood Mrs. Stukely, he excused himself. He didn’t realize she’d been attacked. She’d been partly incoherent. Had we informed the police?
It did seem obvious that robbery had been the purpose of the mass anesthesia. Three television sets with integral tape players were missing. Bon-Bon had been angry enough to count things.
Also gone was a separate video player on which she’d been watching Martin, together with dozens of tapes. Two laptop computers, with printers and racks of filing disks, were missing too, but Worthington prophesied that the police would offer little hope of recovering these things, as Martin had apparently not recorded any identifying numbers anywhere.
Bon-Bon began crying quietly from the strain of it all and it was Worthington, recovering and worth his weight in videotapes, who talked to the overburdened local police station. My constable, Catherine Dodd, he found, was attached to a different branch. Detectives, however, would arrive on the Stukely doorstep soon.
Not surprisingly, the THOMPSON ELECTRONICS van had gone.
Marigold went on snoring on the stairs.
Worthington made calming sandwiches of banana and honey for the children.
Feeling queasy, I sat in Martin’s black leather chair in his den, while Bon-Bon, on an opposite sofa, dried her complicated grief on tissues and finally gave no complete answer to my repeated question, which was, “What was on the tape that Martin meant to give me after the races, and where did it come from? That’s to say, who gave it to Martin himself at Cheltenham?”
Bon-Bon studied me with wet eyes and blew her nose. She said, “I know Martin wanted to tell you something yesterday, but he had those other men in the car, and I know he wanted to talk to you without Priam listening, so he planned to take you home last, after the others, even though you live nearest to the racetrack...” Even in distress she looked porcelain pretty, the plumpness an asset in a curvy black wool suit cut to please a living husband rather than a mourning neighborhood.
“He trusted you,” she said finally.
“Mm. ” I’d have been surprised if he hadn’t.
“No, you don’t understand.” Bon-Bon hesitated and went on slowly. “He knew a secret. He wouldn’t tell me what it was. He said I would fret. But he wanted to tell someone. We did discuss that, and I agreed it should be you. You should be his backup. Just in case. Oh dear... He had what he wanted you to know put onto a plain old-fashioned recording tape, not onto a CD or a computer disk, and he did that, I think, because whoever was giving him information preferred it that way. I’m not sure. And also it was easier to play, he said. Better on video than computer because, darling Gerard, you know I never get things right when it comes to computers. The children laugh at me. I can play a videotape easily. Martin wanted me to be able to do that if he died, but of course... of course... he didn’t think he’d die, not really.”
I asked, “Could you yourself make a home movie on a videotape?”
She nodded. “Martin gave me a video camera for Christmas. It makes your own home films but I’ve hardly had time to learn how to use it.”
“And he didn’t say anything about what was on that tape he meant for me?”
“He was awfully careful not to.”
I shook my head in frustration. The tape stolen from the glass showroom was surely the one with the secret on it. The one passed to Martin, then to Eddie the valet, and then to me. Yet if the Broadway thieves, or thief, had viewed it — and they’d had all night to do so — why were they needing to rob Martin’s house ten hours later?
Did the tape taken from the showroom actually contain Martin’s secret?
Perhaps not.
Was the second robbery carried out by a different thief, who didn’t know about the first one?
I had no answers, only guesses.
Marigold at that point tottered into the den as if coming to pieces in all directions. I had been used to Marigold for the four years since Martin had straightfacedly presented me to his buxom mother-in-law, a magnified version of his pretty wife. Marigold could be endlessly witty or tiresomely belligerent according to the gin level, but this time the effect of gas on alcohol seemed to have resulted in pity-me pathos, a state that aroused genuine sympathy, not serve-you-right.
In Bon-Bon’s house it was the police that turned up first, and Bon-Bon’s children who described down to the laces on his shoes the clothes worn by their attacker. He had stared with wide eyes through his black head mask while he’d pointed the orange cylinder at them and squirted a nearly invisible but fierce mist, sweeping from face to face and knocking them out before they’d realized what was happening. Asked about it, Daniel, the eldest child, described the black-masked man having something white tied over his face underneath. An elementary gas mask, I surmised. Something to prevent the robber from inhaling his own gas.
Worthington had been attacked most strongly and had fallen unconscious first, and Bon-Bon — in the den — last. The gas had perhaps been exhausted by the time I arrived; a direct bang on the head had sufficed.
Worthington had been right in guessing the police would offer no hope of Bon-Bon ever again seeing the missing goods. She felt less pain than I would have expected over the loss of tapes showing Martin winning the Grand National because, as she explained, she could get duplicates.
Scarcely had the police notebooks been folded away than Bon-Bon’s doctor hurried in without apology, giving the impression he was making an exception, out of the goodness of his heart.
It was the color orange that slowed him into frowns and more thorough care. He and the police all listened to Daniel, brought out paper, and took notes. The doctor told the departing detectives to look for villains with access to the anesthetic gas cyclopropane, which came in orange cylinders, and wasn’t much used because of being highly flammable and explosive.
Slowly, after decently thorough peerings into eyes and throats and careful stethoscope chest checks, each of the family was judged fit to go on living. Sweet Bon-Bon, when her house was finally free of official attention, sat sprawling on the office sofa telling me she was utterly exhausted and needed help. Specifically she needed my help and Martin would have asked for it.