Odds Against Read online

  ‘Oh,’ he said, turning, ‘nowhere. I met them only a week or two ago. They’re on a visit from South Africa, and I was sure they wouldn’t know you. And it was Mrs van Dysart I wanted. She has a tongue like a rattlesnake. I knew she would help me tear you to pieces.’ He grinned. ‘She’ll give you a terrible week-end, I’m glad to say.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ I said sarcastically.

  ‘I was a bit worried that Kraye would know you by sight,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘But he obviously doesn’t, so that’s all right. And I didn’t mention your name tonight, as you probably noticed. I am being careful not to.’ He smiled. ‘And he doesn’t know my daughter married Sid Halley… I’ve given him several opportunities of mentioning it, because of course none of this would have been possible if he’d known, but he hasn’t responded at all. As far as Kraye is concerned,’ he finished with satisfaction, ‘you are a pathetic cypher.’

  I said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me all this before? When you so carefully left me that book on company law for instance? Or at least this evening when I came back from seeing Andrews, so that I could have been prepared, at dinner?’

  He opened the door and smiled across the room, his eyes blank again.

  ‘Sleep well,’ he said. ‘Good night, Sid.’

  Charles took the two men out shooting the following morning, and Viola drove their wives into Oxford to do some shopping and visit an exhibition of Venetian glass. I took the opportunity of having a good look round the Krayes’ bedroom.

  It wasn’t until I’d been there for more than ten minutes that it struck me that two years earlier I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing such a thing. Now I had done it as a matter of course, without thinking twice. I grinned sardonically. Evidently even in just sitting around in a detective agency one caught an attitude of mind. I realised, moreover, that I had instinctively gone about my search methodically and with a careful touch. In an odd way it was extremely disconcerting.

  I wasn’t of course looking for anything special: just digging a little into the Krayes’ characters. I wouldn’t even concede in my own mind that I was interested in the challenge Charles had so elaborately thrown down. But all the same I searched, and thoroughly.

  Howard Kraye slept in crimson pyjamas with his initials embroidered in white on the pocket. His dressing-gown was of crimson brocade with a black quilted collar and black tassels on the belt. His washing things, neatly arranged in a large fitted toilet case in the adjoining bathroom, were numerous and ornate. He used pine scented after-shave lotion, cologne friction rub, lemon hand cream, and an oily hair dressing, all from gold-topped cut-glass bottles. There were also medicated soap tablets, special formula toothpaste, talcum powder in a gilt container, deodorant, and a supersonic looking electric razor. He wore false teeth and had a spare set. He had brought a half full tin of laxatives, some fruit salts, a bottle of mouth wash, some antiseptic foot powder, penicillin throat lozenges, a spot sealing stick, digestive tablets and an eye bath. The body beautiful, in and out.

  All his clothes, down to his vests and pants, had been made to measure, and he had brought enough to cover every possibility of a country week-end. I went through the pockets of his dinner-jacket and the three suits hanging beside it, but he was a tidy man and they were all empty, except for a nail file in each breast pocket. His six various pairs of shoes were hand-made and nearly new. I looked into each shoe separately, but except for trees they were all empty.

  In a drawer I found neatly arranged his stock of ties, handkerchiefs, and socks: all expensive. A heavy chased silver box contained cuff links, studs, and tie pins; mostly of gold. He had avoided jewels, but one attractive pair of cuff links was made from pieces of what I now knew enough to identify as tiger-eye. The backs of his hairbrushes were beautiful slabs of the gem stone, smoky quartz. A few brown and grey hairs were lodged in between the bristles.

  There remained only his luggage, four lavish suitcases standing in a neat row beside the wardrobe. I opened each one. They were all empty except for the smallest, which contained a brown calf attaché case. I looked at it carefully before I touched it, but as Kraye didn’t seem to have left any tell-tales like hairs or pieces of cotton attached, I lifted it out and put it on one of the beds. It was locked, but I had learnt how to deal with such drawbacks. A lugubrious ex-police sergeant on Radnor’s payroll gave me progressively harder lessons in lock-picking every time he came into the office between jobs, moaning all the while about the damage the London soot did to his chrysanthemums. My one-handedness he had seen only as a challenge, and had invented a couple of new techniques and instruments entirely for my benefit. Recently he had presented me with a collection of fine delicate keys which he had once removed from a burglar, and had bullied me until I carried them with me everywhere. They were in my room. I went and fetched them and without much trouble opened the case.

  It was as meticulously tidy as everything else, and I was particularly careful not to alter the position or order of any of the papers. There were several letters from a stockbroker, a bunch of share transfer certificates, various oddments, and a series of typed sheets, headed with the previous day’s date, which were apparently an up to the minute analysis of his investments. He seemed to be a rich man and to do a good deal of buying and selling. He had money in oils, mines, property and industrial stocks. There was also a sheet headed simply S.R., on which every transaction was a purchase. Against each entry was a name and the address of a bank. Some names occurred three or four times, some only once.

  Underneath the papers lay a large thick brown envelope inside which were two packets of new ten pound notes. I didn’t count, but there couldn’t have been fewer than a hundred of them. The envelope was at the bottom of the case, except for a writing board with slightly used white blotting paper held by crocodile and gold corners. I pulled up the board and found underneath it two more sheets of paper, both covered with dates, initials, and sums of money.

  I let the whole lot fall back into place, made sure that everything looked exactly as I had found it, relocked the case, and put it back into its covering suitcase.

  The divine Doria, I found, was far from being as tidy as her husband. All her things were in a glorious jumble, which made leaving them undisturbed a difficult job, but also meant that she would be less likely than her husband to notice if anything were slightly out of place.

  Her clothes, though they looked and felt expensive, were bought ready-made and casually treated. Her washing things consisted of a plastic zipped case, a flannel, a tooth brush, bath essence, and a puffing bottle of talc. Almost stark beside Howard’s collection. No medicine. She appeared to wear nothing in bed, but a pretty white quilted dressing-gown hung half off a hanger behind the bathroom door.

  She had not completely unpacked. Suitcases propped on chairs and stools still held stirred-up underclothes and various ultra feminine equipment which I hadn’t seen since Jenny left.

  The top of the dressing-table, though the daily seemed to have done her best to dust it, was an expensive chaos. Pots of cosmetics, bottles of scent and hair spray stood on one side, a box of tissues, a scarf, and the cluttered tray out of the top of a dressing-case filled the other. The dressing-case itself, of crocodile with gold clips, stood on the floor. I picked it up and put it on the bed. It was locked. I unlocked it, and looked inside.

  Doria was quite a girl. She possessed two sets of false eyelashes, spare finger nails, and a hair piece on a tortoiseshell headband. Her big jewel case, the one tidy thing in her whole luggage, contained on the top layer the sapphire and diamond earrings she had worn the previous evening, along with a diamond sunburst brooch and a sapphire ring; and on the lower layer a second necklace, bracelet, earrings, brooch and ring all of gold, platinum, and citrine. The yellow jewels were uncommon, barbaric in design, and had no doubt been made especially for her.

  Under the jewel case were four paper-back novels so pornographic in content as to raise doubts about Kraye’s ability as a lover. Jenny had he
ld that a truly satisfied woman didn’t need to read dirty sex. Doria clearly did.

  Alongside the books was a thick leather covered diary to which the beautiful Mrs Kraye had confided the oddest thoughts. Her life seemed to be as untidy as her clothes, a mixture of ordinary social behaviour, dream fantasy and a perverted marriage relationship. If the diary were to be believed, she and Howard obtained deeper pleasure, both of them, from him beating her, than from the normal act of love. Well, I reflected, at least they were well matched. Some of the divorces which Hunt Radnor Associates dealt with arose because one partner alone was pain fixated, the other being revolted.

  At the bottom of the case were two other objects of interest. First, coiled in a brown velvet bag, the sort of leather strap used by schoolmasters, at whose purpose, in view of the diary, it was easy to guess; and second, in a chocolate box, a gun.

  FOUR

  Telephoning for the local taxi to come and fetch me, I went to Oxford and bought a camera. Although the shop was starting a busy Saturday afternoon, the boy who served me tackled the problem of a one-handed photographer with enthusiasm and as if he had all the time in the world. Between us we sorted out a miniature German sixteen millimetre camera, three inches long by one and a half wide, which I could hold, set, snap and wind with one hand with the greatest ease.

  He gave me a thorough lesson in how to work it, added an inch to its length in the shape of a screwed-on photo electric light meter, loaded it with film, and slid it into a black case so small that it made no bulge in my trouser pocket. He also offered to change the film later if I couldn’t manage it. We parted on the best of terms.

  When I got back everyone was sitting round a cosy fire in the drawing-room, eating crumpets. Very tantalising. I loved crumpets.

  No one took much notice when I went in and sat down on the fringe of the circle except Mrs van Dysart, who began sharpening her claws. She got in a couple of quick digs about spongers marrying girls for their money, and Charles didn’t say that I hadn’t. Viola looked at me searchingly, worry opening her mouth. I winked, and she shut it again in relief.

  I gathered that the morning’s bag had been the usual mixture (two brace of pheasant, five wild duck and a hare), because Charles preferred a rough shoot over his own land to organised affairs with beaters. The women had collected a poor opinion of Oxford shop assistants and a booklet on the manufacture of fifteenth-century Italian glass. All very normal for a country week-end. It was my snooping which seemed unreal. That, and the false position Charles had steered me into.

  Kraye’s gaze, and finally his hands, strayed back to the gem bookshelves. Again the door was opened, Charles’ trick lighting working effectively, and one by one the gems were brought out, passed round and closely admired. Mrs van Dysart seemed much attached to a spectacular piece of rose quartz, playing with it to make light strike sparks from it, and smoothing her fingers over the glossy surface.

  ‘Rex, you must collect some of this for me!’ she ordered, her will showing like iron inside the fluff: and masterful looking Rex nodded his meek agreement.

  Kraye was saying, ‘You know, Roland, these are really remarkably fine specimens. Among the best I’ve ever seen. Your cousin must have been extremely fortunate and influential to acquire so many fine crystals.’

  ‘Oh, indeed he was,’ agreed Charles equably.

  ‘I should be interested if you ever think of realising on them… a first option, perhaps?’

  ‘You can have a first option by all means,’ smiled Charles. ‘But I shan’t be selling them, I assure you.’

  ‘Ah well, so you say now. But I don’t give up easily… I shall try you later. But don’t forget, my first option?’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Charles. ‘My word on it.’

  Kraye smiled at the stone he held in his hands, a magnificent raw amethyst like a cluster of petrified violets.

  ‘Don’t let this fall into the fire,’ he said. ‘It would turn yellow.’ He then treated everyone to a lecture on amethysts which would have been interesting had he made any attempt at simplicity: but blinding by words was with him either a habit or a policy. I wasn’t certain which.

  ‘…Manganese, of course occurring in geodes or agate nodules in South America or Russia, but with such a world-wide distribution it was only to be expected that elementary societies should ascribe to it supra rational inherencies and attributes…’

  I suddenly found him looking straight at me, and I knew my expression had not been one of impressed admiration. More like quizzical sarcasm. He didn’t like it. There was a quick flash in his eyes.

  ‘It is symptomatic of the slum mentality,’ he remarked, ‘to scoff at what it can’t comprehend.’

  ‘Sid,’ said Charles sharply, unconsciously giving away half my name, ‘I’m sure you must have something else to do. We can let you go until dinner.’

  I stood up. The natural anger rose quickly, but only as far as my teeth. I swallowed. ‘Very well,’ I muttered.

  ‘Before you go, Sid,’ said Mrs van Dysart from the depths of a sofa, ‘… Sid, what a deliciously plebeian name, so suitable… Put these down on the table for me.’

  She held out both hands, one stone in each and another balanced between them. I couldn’t manage them all, and dropped them.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs van Dysart, acidly sweet, as I knelt and picked them up, putting them one by one on the table, ‘I forgot you were disabled, so silly of me.’ She hadn’t forgotten. ‘Are you sure you can’t get treatment for whatever is wrong with you? You ought to try some exercises, they’d do you the world of good. All you need is a little perseverance. You owe it to the Admiral, don’t you think, to try?’

  I didn’t answer, and Charles at least had the grace to keep quiet.

  ‘I know of a very good man over here,’ went on Mrs van Dysart. ‘He used to work for the army at home… excellent at getting malingerers back into service. Now he’s the sort of man who’d do you good. What do you think Admiral, shall I fix up for your son-in-law to see him?’

  ‘Er…’ said Charles, ‘I don’t think it would work.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ She was brisk and full of smiles. ‘You can’t let him lounge about doing nothing for the rest of his life. A good bracing course of treatment, that’s what he needs. Now,’ she said turning to me, ‘so that I know exactly what I’m talking about when I make an appointment, let’s see this precious crippled hand of yours.’

  There was a tiny pause. I could feel their probing eyes, their unfriendly curiosity.

  ‘No,’ I said calmly. ‘Excuse me, but no.’

  As I walked across the room and out of the door her voice floated after me. ‘There you are, Admiral, he doesn’t want to get better. They’re all the same…’

  I lay on my bed for a couple of hours re-reading the book on company law, especially, now, the section on take-overs. It was no easier than it had been in the hospital, and now that I knew why I was reading it, it seemed more involved, not less. If the directors of Seabury were worried, they would surely have called in their own investigator. Someone who knew his way round the stock markets like I knew my way round the track. An expert. I wasn’t at all the right sort of person to stop Kraye, even if indeed anyone could stop him. And yet… I stared at the ceiling, taking my lower lip between my teeth… and yet I did have a wild idea…

  Viola came in, knocking as she opened the door.

  ‘Sid, dear, are you all right? Can I do anything for you?’ She shut the door, gentle, generous, and worried.

  I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. ‘No thanks, I’m fine.’

  She perched on the arm of an easy chair, looked at me with her kind, slightly mournful brown eyes, and said a little breathlessly, ‘Sid, why are you letting Charles say such terrible things about you? It isn’t only when you are there in the room, they’ve been, oh, almost sniggering about you behind your back. Charles and that frightful Mrs van Dysart… What has happened between you and him? When you nearly died he co
uldn’t have been more worried if you’d been his own son… but now he is so cruel, and terribly unfair.’

  ‘Dear Viola, don’t worry. It’s only some game that Charles is playing, and I go along with him.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, nodding. ‘He warned me. He said that you were both going to lay a smoke screen and that I was on no account to say a single word in your defence the whole weekend. But it wasn’t true, was it? When I saw your face, when Charles said that about your poor mother, I knew you didn’t know what he was going to do.’

  ‘Was it so obvious?’ I said ruefully. ‘Well, I promise you I haven’t quarrelled with him. Will you just be a dear and do exactly as he asked? Don’t say a single word to any of them about… um… the more successful bits of my life history, or about my job at the agency, or about the shooting. You didn’t today, did you, on the trip to Oxford?’ I finished with some anxiety.

  She shook her head. ‘I thought I’d talk to you first.’

  ‘Good,’ I grinned.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she cried, partly in relief, partly in puzzlement. ‘Well in that case, Charles asked me to pop in and make sure you would come down to dinner.’

  ‘Oh he did, did he? Afraid I’ll throw a boot at him, I should think, after sending me out of the room like that. Well, you just pop back to Charles and say that I’ll come down to dinner on condition that he organises some chemmy afterwards, and includes me out.’

  Dinner was a bit of a trial: with their smoked salmon and pheasant the guests enjoyed another round of Sid-baiting. Both the Krayes, egged on by Charles and the fluffy harpy beside him, had developed a pricking skill at this novel weekend parlour game, and I heartily wished Charles had never thought of it. However, he kept his side of the bargain by digging out the chemmy shoe, and after the coffee, the brandy, and another inspection of the dining-room quartz, he settled his guests firmly round the table in the drawing-room.

  Upstairs, once the shoe was clicking regularly and the players were well involved, I went and collected Kraye’s attaché case and took it along to my room.