“For a start,” he said with sarcasm, fastening his seat belt as if keeping to the law were routine, “the Robins family don’t exist. That bunch of swindlers known as Arthur Robins are mostly Veritys and Webbers, with a couple of Browns thrown in. There hasn’t been a bona fide Arthur Robins ever. It’s just a pretty name.”
Eyebrows raised in surprise, I asked, “How do you know all that?”
“My old man ran a book,” he said. “Fasten your seat belt, Gerard, the cops in this town would put eagles out of business. Like I said, my old man was a bookmaker, he taught me the trade. You’ve got to be real sharp at figures, though, to make a profit, and I never got quick enough. But Arthur Robins, that’s the front name for some whizzers of speed merchants. Don’t bet with them, that’s my advice.”
I said, “Do you know that Eddie Payne, Martin’s valet, has a daughter called Rose who says her last name is Robins and who’s on cuddling terms with an Elvis Presley lookalike taking bets for Arthur Robins?”
Worthington, who had been about to start the car outside Logan Glass to drive us to Bon-Bon, sat back in his seat, letting his hands fall laxly on his thighs.
“No,” he said thoughtfully, “I didn’t know that.” He thought for a while, his forehead troubled. “That Elvis fellow,” he said finally, “that’s Norman Osprey. You don’t want to mix with him.”
“And Rose?”
Worthington shook his head. “I don’t know her. I’ll ask around.” He roused himself and started the car.
By Thursday, the day of Martin’s funeral, the police as predicted hadn’t found one identifiable videotape in a country awash with them.
On the day before the funeral a young woman on a motorbike — huge helmet, black leather jacket, matching pants, heavy boots — steered into one of the five parking spaces at the front of Logan Glass. Outside in the January chill she pulled off the helmet and shook free a cap of fair fine hair before walking without swagger into the gallery and showroom as if she knew the way well.
I was putting the pre-annealing final touches to a vase, with Pamela Jane telling a group of American tourists how it was done, but there was something attention-claiming about the motorcyclist, and as soon as I thought of her in terms of glass, I knew her infallibly.
“Catherine Dodd,” I said.
“Most people don’t recognize me.” She was amused, not piqued.
With interest I watched the tourists pack somewhat closer together as if to elbow out the stranger in threatening clothes.
Pamela Jane finished her spiel and one of the American men said the vases were too expensive, even if they were handmade and handsome. He collected nods and all-around agreement, and there was relief in the speed with which the tourists settled instead on simple dolphins and little dishes. While Hickory wrapped the parcels and wrote out bills, I asked the motorcyclist if there were any news of my lost tape.
She watched me handle the vase in heatproof fiber and put it to cool in the annealing oven.
“I’m afraid,” said Detective Constable Dodd in plain — well, plainer — clothes, “your tape is gone for good.”
I told her it held a secret.
“What secret?”
“That’s the point, I don’t know. Martin Stukely told his wife he was giving me a secret on tape for safekeeping — that’s a bit of a laugh — in case he was killed in a car crash, or something like that.”
“Like a steeplechase?”
“He didn’t expect it.”
Catherine Dodd’s detective mind trod the two paths I’d reluctantly followed myself since Norman Osprey and his Elvis sideburns had appeared on my horizon. First, someone knew Martin’s secret, and second, someone, and maybe not the same someone, could infer that, one way or another, that secret was known to me. Someone might suppose I’d watched that tape during the evening of Martin’s death, and for safety had wiped it off.
I hadn’t had a tape player on the Logan Glass premises, but the Dragon over the road made one available generously to the paying guests, and she distributed brochures by the hundred advertising this.
“If I’d had a tape player handy,” I said, “I probably would have run that tape through early in the evening, and if I thought it awful I might have wiped it off.”
“That’s not what your friend Martin wanted.”
After a brief silence I said, “If he’d been sure of what he wanted he wouldn’t have fiddled about with tapes, he would just have told me this precious secret.” I stopped abruptly. “There are too many ifs. How about you coming out for a drink?”
“Can’t. Sorry. I’m on duty.” She gave me a brilliant smile. “I’ll call in another day. And oh! There’s just one loose end.” She produced the ever essential notebook from inside her jacket. “What are your assistants’ names?”
“Pamela Jane Evans and John Irish and John Hickory. We leave off John for the men and use their last names, as it’s easier.”
“Which is the elder?”
“Irish. He’s about ten years older than both Hickory and Pamela Jane.”
“And how long have they all worked for you?”
“Pamela Jane about a year, Irish and Hickory two to three months longer. They’re all good guys, believe me.”
“I do believe you. This is just for the records. This is actually... er... what I dropped in for.”
I looked at her straightly. She all but blushed.
“I’d better go now,” she said.
With regret I walked with her as far as the door, where she paused to say good-bye as she didn’t want to be seen with me too familiarly out in the street. She left, in fact, in the bunch of winter tourists, all of them overshadowed by the loud voice of a big man who judged the whole afternoon a waste of time and complained about it all the way back to the group’s warm tour bus. His broad back obscured my view of the departure of Detective Constable Dodd, and I surprised myself by minding about that quite a lot.
On Bon-Bon’s telephone, the night before Martin’s funeral, I learned from the Dragon herself that Lloyd Baxter had deemed it correct to fly down for “his jockey’s last ride” (as he put it) but hadn’t wanted to stay with Priam Jones, whom he was on the point of ditching as his trainer. The Dragon chuckled and went on mischievously, “You didn’t have to go all that way to stay with Bon-Bon Stukely, if you didn’t fancy sleeping in your burgled house, lover boy. You could have stayed here with me.”
“News gets around,” I said dryly.
“You’re always news in this town, lover, didn’t you know?”
In truth I did know it, but I didn’t feel it.
On the evening before Martin’s funeral Priam Jones telephoned, meaning to talk to Bon-Bon, but reaching me instead. I had been fielding commiserations for her whenever I was around. Marigold, Worthington and even the children had grown expert at thanks and tact. I thought how Martin would have grinned at the all-around grade-A improvement in his family’s social skills.
Priam blustered on a bit, but was, I gathered, offering himself as an usher in the matter of seating. Remembering his spontaneous tears I put him on the list and asked him if, before he’d picked me up from my home on Friday morning, Martin had by any chance mentioned that he was expecting delivery of a tape at the races.