I said gratefully that I could, and reckoned that I’d have to leave soon after two-thirty to be sure of making it. I told Annette, and asked what they did about locking up.
“Mr. Franklin usually gets here first and leaves last.” She stopped, confused. “I mean...”
“I know,” I said. “It’s all right. I think of him in the present tense too. So go on.”
“Well, the double front doors bolt on the inside. Then the door from the lobby to the offices has an electronic bolt, as you know. So does the door from the corridor to the stockrooms. So does the rear door, where we all come in and out. Mr. Franklin changes... changed... the numbers at least every week. And there’s another electronic lock, of course, on the door from the lobby to the showroom, and from the corridor into the showroom...” She paused. “It does seem a lot, I know, but the electronic locks are very simple, really. You only have to remember three digits. Last Friday they were five, three, two. They’re easy to work. Mr. Franklin installed them so that we shouldn’t have too many keys lying around. He and I both have a key, though, that will unlock all the electronic locks manually, if we need to.”
“So you’ve remembered the numbers?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. It was just, this morning, with everything... they went out of my head.”
“And the vault,” I said. “Does that have any electronics?”
“No, but it has an intricate locking system in that heavy door, though it looks so simple from the outside. Mr. Franklin always locks... locked... the vault before he left. When he went away on long trips, he made the key available to me.”
I wondered fleetingly about that awkward phrase, but didn’t pursue it. I asked her instead about the showroom, which I hadn’t seen and, again with pride, she went into the corridor, programmed a shining brass doorknob with the open sesame numbers, and ushered me into a windowed room that looked much like a shop, with glass-topped display counters and the firm’s overall ambience of wealth.
Annette switched on powerful lights and the place came to life. She moved contentedly behind the counters, pointing out to me the contents now bright with illumination.
“In here are examples of everything we stock, except not all the sizes, of course, and not the faceted stones in the vault. We don’t really use the showroom a great deal, only for new customers mostly, but I like being in here. I love the stones. They’re fascinating. Mr. Franklin says stones are the only things the human race takes from the earth and makes more beautiful.” She lifted a face heavy with loss. “What will happen without him?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said, “but in the short term we fill the orders and dispatch them, and order more stock from where you usually get it. We keep to all the old routines and practices. OK?”
She nodded, relieved at least for the present.
“Except,” I added, “that it will be you who arrives first and leaves last, if you don’t mind.”
“That’s all right. I always do when Mr. Franklin’s away.”
We stared briefly at each other, not putting words to the obvious, then she switched off the showroom lights almost as if it were a symbolic act, and as we left pulled the self-locking door shut behind us.
Back in Greville’s office I wrote down for her my own address and telephone number, and said that if she felt insecure, or wanted to talk, I would be at home all evening.
“I’ll come back here tomorrow morning after I’ve seen the bank manager,” I said. “Will you be all right until then?”
She nodded shakily. “What do we call you? We can’t call you Mr. Franklin, it wouldn’t seem right.”
“How about Derek?”
“Oh no.” She was instinctively against it. “Would you mind, say... Mr. Derek?”
“If you prefer it.” It sounded quaintly old-fashioned to me, but she was happy with it and said she would tell the others.
“About the others,” I said, “sort everyone out for me, with their jobs. There’s you, June, Lily...
“June works the computers and the stock control,” she said. “Lily fills the orders. Tina, she’s a general assistant, she helps Lily and does some of the secretarial work. So does June. So do I, actually. We all do what’s needed, really. There are few hard and fast divisions. Except that Alfie doesn’t do much except pack up the orders. It takes him all his time.”
“And that younger guy with the spiky orange halo?”
“Jason? Don’t worry about the hair, he’s harmless. He’s our muscles. The stones are very heavy in bulk, you know. Jason shifts boxes, fills the stockrooms, does odd jobs and vacuums the carpets. He helps Alfie sometimes, or Lily, if we’re busy. Like I said, we all do anything, whatever’s needed. Mr. Franklin has never let anyone mark out a territory.”
“His words?”
“Yes, of course.”
Collective responsibility, I thought. I bowed to my brother’s wisdom. If it worked, it worked. And from the look of everything in the place, it did indeed work, and I wouldn’t disturb it.
I closed and locked the vault door with Greville’s key and asked Annette which of his large bunch overrode the electronic locks. That one, she said, pointing, separating it.
“What are all the others, do you know?”
She looked blank. “I’ve no idea.”
Car, house, whatever. I supposed I might eventually sort them out. I gave her what I hoped was a reassuring smile, sketched a goodbye to some of the others and rode down in the service elevator to find Brad out in the yard.
“Swindon,” I said. “The medical center where we were on Friday. Would you mind?”
“ ’Course not.” Positively radiant, I thought.
It was an eighty-mile journey, ten miles beyond home. Brad managed it without further communication and I spent the time thinking of all the things I hadn’t yet done, like seeing to Greville’s house and stopping delivery of his daily paper, wherever it might come from, and telling the post office to divert his letters... To hell with it, I thought wearily. Why did the damned man have to die?
The orthopedist X-rayed and unwrapped my ankle and tut-tutted. From toes to shin it looked hard, black and swollen, the skin almost shiny from the stretching.
“I advised you to rest it,” he said, a touch crossly.
“My brother died...” I explained about the mugging, and also about having to see to Greville’s affairs.
He listened carefully, a strong sensible man with prematurely white hair. I didn’t know a jockey who didn’t trust him. He understood our needs and our imperatives, because he treated a good many of us who lived in or near the training center of Lambourn.
“As I told you the other day,” he said when I’d finished, “you’ve fractured the lower end of the fibula, and where the tibia and fibula should be joined, they’ve sprung apart. Today, they are farther apart. They’re now providing no support at all for the talus, the heel bones. You’ve now completely ripped the lateral ligament, which normally binds the ankle together. The whole joint is insecure and coming apart inside, like a mortise joint in a piece of furniture when the glue’s given way.”
“So how long will it take?” I said.
He smiled briefly. “In a crepe bandage it will hurt for about another ten days, and after that you can walk on it. You could be back on a horse in three weeks from now, if you don’t mind the stirrup hurting you, which it will. About another three weeks after that, the ankle might be strong enough for racing.”
“Good,” I said, relieved. “Not much worse than before, then.”
“It’s worse, but it won’t take much longer to mend.”
“Fine.”
He looked down at the depressing sight. “If you’re going to be doing all this traveling about, you’d be much more comfortable in a rigid cast. You could put your weight on it in a couple of days. You’d have almost no pain.”