Odds Against Read online

  ‘People loosen up over the dinner table… they talk more, and you get to know them better.’ He was carefully unpersuasive.

  ‘They’ll talk to you just as well if I’m not there – better in fact. And I couldn’t stand watching you all tuck into steaks.’

  He said musingly, ‘You can stand anything, Sid. But I think you’d be interested. Not bored, I promise you. More brandy?’

  I shook my head, and relented. ‘All right, I’ll be there at dinner, if you want it.’

  He relaxed only a fraction. A controlled and subtle man. I smiled at him, and he guessed that I’d been playing him along.

  ‘You’re a bastard,’ he said.

  From him, it was a compliment.

  The transistor beside my bed was busy with the morning news as I slowly ate my breakfast pot of astronaut paste.

  ‘The race meeting scheduled for today and tomorrow at Seabury,’ the announcer said, ‘has had to be abandoned. A tanker carrying liquid chemical crashed and overturned at dusk yesterday afternoon on a road crossing the racecourse. There was considerable damage to the turf, and after an examination this morning the Stewards regretfully decided that it was not fit to be raced on. It is hoped to replace the affected turf in time for the next meeting in a fortnight’s time, but an announcement will be made about this at a later date. And here is the weather forecast…’

  Poor Seabury, I thought, always in the wars. It was only a year since their stable block had been burned down on the eve of a meeting. They had had to cancel then too, because temporary stables could not be erected overnight, and the National Hunt Committee in consultation with Radnor had decided that indiscriminate stabling in the surrounding district was too much of a security risk.

  It was a nice track to ride on, a long circuit with no sharp bends, but there had been trouble with the surface in the Spring; a drain of some sort had collapsed during a hurdle race. The forefeet of one unfortunate horse had gone right through into it to a depth of about eighteen inches and he had broken a leg. In the resulting pile-up two more horses had been ruinously injured and one jockey badly concussed. Maps of the course didn’t even warn that the drain existed, and I’d heard trainers wondering whether there were any more antique waterways ready to collapse with as little notice. The executive, on their side, naturally swore there weren’t.

  For some time I lay day-dreaming, racing round Seabury again in my mind, and wishing uselessly, hopelessly, achingly, that I could do it again in fact.

  Mrs Cross tapped on the door and came in. She was a quiet, unobtrusive mouse of a woman with soft brown hair and a slight outward cast in her grey-green eyes. Although she seemed to have no spirit whatever and seldom spoke, she ran the place like oiled machinery, helped by a largely invisible squad of ‘dailies’. She had the great virtue to me of being fairly new in the job and impartial on the subject of Jenny and me. I wouldn’t have trusted her predecessor, who had been fanatically fond of Jenny, not to have added cascara to my beef juice.

  ‘The Admiral would like to know if you are feeling well today, Mr Halley,’ said Mrs Cross primly, picking up my breakfast tray.

  ‘Yes, I am, thank you.’ More or less.

  ‘He said, then, when you’re ready would you join him in the dining-room?’

  ‘The rocks?’

  She gave me a small smile. ‘He was up before me this morning, and had his breakfast on a tray in there. Shall I tell him you’ll come down?’

  ‘Please.’

  When she had gone, and while I was slowly dressing, the telephone bell rang. Not long afterwards, Charles himself came upstairs.

  ‘That was the police,’ he said abruptly, with a frown. ‘Apparently they’ve found a body and they want you to go and identify it.’

  ‘Whose body, for heaven’s sake?’

  ‘They didn’t say. They said they would send a car for you immediately, though. I gathered they really rang here to locate you.’

  ‘I haven’t any relatives. It must be a mistake.’

  He shrugged. ‘We’ll know soon, anyway. Come down now and test me on the quartz. I think I’ve got it taped at last.’

  We went down to the dining-room, where I found he was right. He went round the whole lot without a mistake. I changed the order in which they stood, but it didn’t throw him. He smiled, very pleased with himself.

  ‘Word perfect,’ he said. ‘Let’s put them up on the shelves now. At least, we’ll put all the least valuable ones up there, and the gem stones in the bookcase in the drawing-room – that one with the curtains inside the glass doors.’

  ‘They ought to be in a safe.’ I had said it yesterday evening as well.

  ‘They were quite all right on the dining-room table last night, in spite of your fears.’

  ‘As the consultant private detective in the case I still advise a safe.’

  He laughed. ‘You know bloody well I haven’t got a safe. But as consultant private detective you can guard the things properly tonight. You can put them under your pillow. How’s that?’

  ‘O.K.’ I nodded.

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘Well no… they’d be too hard under the pillow.’

  ‘Damn it…’

  ‘But upstairs, either with you or me, yes. Some of those stones really are valuable. You must have had to pay a big insurance premium on them.’

  ‘Er… no,’ admitted Charles. ‘I guaranteed to replace anything which was damaged or lost.’

  I goggled. ‘I know you’re rich, but… you’re an absolute nut. Get them insured at once. Have you any idea what each specimen is worth?’

  ‘No, as a matter of fact… no. I didn’t ask.’

  ‘Well, if you’ve got a collector coming to stay, he’ll expect you to remember how much you paid for each.’

  ‘I thought of that,’ he interrupted. ‘I inherited them all from a distant cousin. That covers a lot of ignorance, not only costs and values but about crystalography and distribution and rarity, and everything specialised. I found I couldn’t possibly learn enough in one day. Just to be able to show some familiarity with the collection should be enough.’

  ‘That’s fair enough. But you ring the Carver Foundation at once and find out what the stones are worth just the same, and then get straight on to your broker. The trouble with you, Charles, is that you are too honest. Other people aren’t. This is the bad rough world you’re in now, not the Navy.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said amicably. ‘I’ll do as you say. Hand me that inventory.’

  He went to telephone and I began putting the chunks of quartz on the empty bookshelves, but before I had done much the front door bell rang. Mrs Cross went to answer it and presently came to tell me that a policeman was asking for me.

  I put my useless deformed left hand into my pocket, as I always did with strangers, and went into the hall. A tall heavy young man in uniform stood there, giving the impression of trying not to be overawed by his rather grand surroundings. I remembered how it felt.

  ‘Is it about this body?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, sir, I believe you are expecting us.’

  ‘Whose body is it?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. I was just asked to take you.’

  ‘Well… where to?’

  ‘Epping Forest, sir.’

  ‘But that’s miles away,’ I protested.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he agreed, with a touch of gloom.

  ‘Are you sure it’s me that’s wanted?’

  ‘Oh, positive, sir.’

  ‘Well, all right. Sit down a minute while I get my coat and say where I’m going.’

  The policeman drove on his gears, which I found tiring. It took two hours to go from Aynsford, west of Oxford, to Epping Forest, and it was much too long. Finally, however, we were met at a cross-roads by another policeman on a motor cycle, and followed him down a twisting secondary road. The forest stretched away all round, bare-branched and mournful in the grey damp day.

  Round the bend we came on a row of two
cars and a van, parked. The motor cyclist stopped and dismounted, and the policeman and I got out.

  ‘ETA 12.15,’ said the motor cyclist looking at his watch. ‘You’re late. The brass has been waiting here twenty minutes.’

  ‘Traffic like caterpillars on the A40,’ said my driver defensively.

  ‘You should have used your bell,’ the motor cyclist grinned. ‘Come on. It’s over this way.’

  He led us down a barely perceptible track into the wood. We walked on dead brown leaves, rustling. After about half a mile we came to a group of men standing round a screen made of hessian. They were stamping their feet to keep warm and talking in quiet voices.

  ‘Mr Halley?’ One of them shook hands, a pleasant capable looking man in middle age who introduced himself as Chief-Inspector Cornish. ‘We’re sorry to bring you here all this way, but we want you to see the er… remains… before we move them. I’d better warn you, it’s a perfectly horrible sight.’ He gave a very human shudder.

  ‘Who is it?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re hoping you can tell us that, for sure. We think… but we’d like you to tell us without us putting it into your head. All right? Now?’

  I nodded. He showed me round the screen.

  It was Andrews. What was left of him. He had been dead a long time, and the Epping Forest scavengers seemed to have found him tasty. I could see why the police had wanted me to see him in situ. He was going to fall to pieces as soon as they moved him.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Thomas Andrews,’ I said.

  They relaxed. ‘Are you sure? Positive?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s not just the clothes?’

  ‘No. The shape of the hair-line. Protruding ears. Exceptionally rounded helix, vestigial lobes. Very short eyebrows, thick near the nose. Spatulate thumbs, white marks across nails. Hair growing on backs of phalanges.’

  ‘Good,’ said Cornish. ‘That’s conclusive, I’d say. We made a preliminary identification fairly early because of the clothes – they were detailed on the wanted-for-questioning list, of course. But our first enquiries were negative. He seems to have no family, and no one could remember that he had any distinguishing marks – no tattoos, no scars, no operations, and as far as we could find out he hadn’t been to a dentist all his life.’

  ‘It was intelligent of you to check all that before you gave him to the pathologist,’ I remarked.

  ‘It was the pathologist’s idea, actually.’ He smiled.

  ‘Who found him?’ I asked.

  ‘Some boys. It’s usually boys who find bodies.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Three days ago. But obviously he’s been here weeks, probably from very soon after he took a pot at you.’

  ‘Yes. Is the gun still in his pocket?’

  Cornish shook his head. ‘No sign of it.’

  ‘You don’t know yet how he died?’ I asked.

  ‘No not yet. But now you’ve identified him we can get on with it.’

  We went out from behind the screen and some of the other men went in with a stretcher. I didn’t envy them.

  Cornish turned to walk back to the road with me, the driver following at a short distance. We went fairly slowly, talking about Andrews, but it seemed more like eight miles than eight hundred yards. I wasn’t quite ready for jolly country rambles.

  As we reached the cars he asked me to lunch with him. I shook my head, explained about the diet, and suggested a drink instead.

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘We could both do with one after that.’ He jerked his head in the direction of Andrews. ‘There’s a good pub down the road this way. Your driver can follow us.’

  He climbed into his car and we drove after him.

  In the bar, equipped with a large brandy and water for me and a whisky and sandwiches for him, we sat at a black oak table, on chintzy chairs, surrounded by horse brasses, hunting horns, warming pans and pewter pots.

  ‘It’s funny, meeting you like this,’ said Cornish, in between bites. ‘I’ve watched you so often racing. You’ve won a tidy bit for me in your time. I hardly missed a meeting on the old Dunstable course, before they sold it for building. I don’t get so much racing now, it’s so far to a course. Nowhere now to slip along to for a couple of hours in an afternoon.’ He grinned cheerfully and went on, ‘You gave us some rare treats at Dunstable. Remember the day you rode that ding-dong finish on Brushwood?’

  ‘I remember,’ I said.

  ‘You literally picked that horse up and carried him home.’ He took another bite. ‘I never heard such cheering. There’s no mistake about it, you were something. Pity you had to give it up.’

  ‘Yes…’

  ‘Still, I suppose that’s a risk you run, steeplechasing. There is always one crash too many.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Where was it you finally bought it?’

  ‘At Stratford on Avon, two years ago last May.’

  He shook his head sympathetically, ‘Rotten bad luck.’

  I smiled. ‘I’d had a pretty good run, though, before that.’

  ‘I’ll say you did.’ He smacked his palm on the table. ‘I took the Missus down to Kempton on Boxing Day, three or four years ago…’ He went on talking with enjoyment about races he had watched, revealing himself as a true enthusiast, one of the people without whose interest all racing would collapse. Finally, regretfully, he finished his whisky and looked at his watch. ‘I’ll have to get back. I’ve enjoyed meeting you. It’s odd how things turn out, isn’t it? I don’t suppose you ever thought when you were riding that you would be good at this sort of work.’

  ‘What do you mean, good?’ I asked, surprised.

  ‘Hm? Oh, Andrews, of course. That description of his clothes you gave after he had shot you. And identifying him today. Most professional. Very efficient.’ He grinned.

  ‘Getting shot wasn’t very efficient,’ I pointed out.

  He shrugged. ‘That could happen to anyone, believe me… I shouldn’t worry about that.’

  I smiled, as the driver jerked me back to Aynsford, at the thought that anyone could believe me good at detective work. There was a simple explanation of my being able to describe and identify – I had read so many of the Missing Persons and Divorce files. The band of ex-policemen who compiled them knew what to base identification on, the unchanging things like ears and hands, not hair colour or the wearing of spectacles or a moustache. One of them had told me without pride that wigs, beards, face-padding, and the wearing of or omission of cosmetics made no impression on him, because they were not what he looked at. ‘Ears and fingers,’ he said, ‘they can’t disguise those. They never think of trying. Stick to ears and fingers, and you don’t go far wrong.’

  Ears and fingers were just about all there was left of Andrews to identify. The unappetising gristly bits.

  The driver decanted me at Charles’ back door and I walked along the passage to the hall. When I had one foot on the bottom tread of the staircase Charles himself appeared at the drawing-room door.

  ‘Oh, hullo, I thought it might be you. Come in here and look at these.’

  Reluctantly leaving the support of the banisters I followed him into the drawing-room.

  ‘There,’ he said, pointing. He had fixed up a strip of light inside his bookcase and it shone down on to the quartz gems, bringing them to sparkling life. The open doors with their red silk curtains made a softly glowing frame. It was an eye-catching and effective arrangement, and I told him so.

  ‘Good. The light goes on automatically when the doors are open… nifty, don’t you think?’ He laughed. ‘And you can set your mind at rest. They are now insured.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  He shut the doors of the bookcase and the light inside went out. The red curtains discreetly hid their treasure. Turning to me more seriously, he said, ‘Whose body?’

  ‘Andrews.’

  ‘The man who shot you? How extraordinary. Suicide?’

  ‘No, I don’t think
so. The gun wasn’t there, anyway.’

  He made a quick gesture towards the chair. ‘My dear Sid, sit down, sit down. You look like d… er… a bit worn out. You shouldn’t have gone all that way. Put your feet up, I’ll get you a drink.’ He fussed over me like a mother hen, fetching me first water, then brandy, and finally a cup of warm beef juice from Mrs Cross, and sat opposite me watching while I despatched it.

  ‘Do you like that stuff?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, luckily.’

  ‘We used to have it when we were children. A ritual once a week. My father used to drain it out of the Sunday joint, propping the dish on the carving fork. We all loved it, but I haven’t had any for years.’

  ‘Try some?’ I offered him the cup.

  He took it and tasted it. ‘Yes, it’s good. Takes me back sixty years…’ He smiled companionably, relaxing in his chair, and I told him about Andrews and the long-dead state he was in.

  ‘It sounds,’ he said slowly, ‘as if he might have been murdered.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be surprised. He was young and healthy. He wouldn’t just lie down and die of exposure in Essex.’

  Charles laughed.

  ‘What time are your guests expected?’ I asked, glancing at the clock. It was just after five.

  ‘About six.’

  ‘I think I’ll go up and lie on my bed for a while, then.’

  ‘You are all right, Sid, aren’t you? I mean, really all right?’

  ‘Oh yes. Just tired.’

  ‘Will you come down to dinner?’ There was the faintest undercurrent of disappointment in his casual voice. I thought of all his hard work with the rocks and the amount of manoeuvring he had done. Besides, I was getting definitely curious myself about his intentions.

  ‘Yes,’ I nodded, getting up. ‘Lay me a teaspoon.’

  I made it upstairs and lay on my bed, sweating. And cursing. Although the bullet had missed everything vital in tearing holes through my gut, it had singed and upset a couple of nerves, and they had warned me in the hospital that it would be some time before I felt well. It didn’t please me that so far they were right.