"Aunt Marjorie!" Dart looked flummoxed. "You"ve had Lee working for you? you?
"And what"s wrong with that? It was for the ultimate good of the family. How can we proceed, if we don"t know the facts?"
The world"s politicians could learn from her, I thought with admiration. The clearest of brains under the waved white hair.
"Along the way," I said, "I learned about Forsyth and the lawn mowers."
Dart gasped. Marjorie"s eyes widened.
"Also," I went on, "I heard about Hannah"s bit of rough trade, and its results."
"What are you talking about?" Dart asked me, lost.
Marjorie enlightened him. "Hannah went off into the bushes with a gypsy and got herself pregnant, the silly ninny. Keith a.s.saulted the gypsy, who demanded money, of course. My brother paid him off."
"Do you mean..." Dart worked it out, "that Jack"s father was a gypsy? gypsy?"
"Near enough. Not even a Romany. A good-for-nothing tramp," Marjorie said.
"Oh, my G.o.d," Dart said, weakly.
"And don"t speak of it again," Marjorie commanded severely. "Hannah tells Jack his father was a foreign aristocrat who would have been ruined by the scandal."
"Yes," Dart"s voice sounded faint. "Jack told me that himself."
"And let him believe it. I hope, Lee," she said to me, "that that"s all."
The telephone rang on the small table beside her chair. She picked up the receiver and listened.
"Yes... when? Dart is here. So is Lee. Yes." She put the receiver down and said to Dart, "That was your father. He says he is coming here. He sounds incredibly angry. What have you done?"
"Is Keith with him?" My words came out with a jerk, which she pounced on.
"You"re afraid of Keith!"
"Not unreasonably."
"Conrad said Keith told him to come here, but I don"t know if Keith was with him or not. Do you wish to leave now, at once?"
Yes, I did, and no, I didn"t. I thought of murder in her quiet drawing room and hoped she wouldn"t allow it.
I said, "I brought a photograph to show you. It"s in Dart"s car. I"ll just fetch it."
I stood up and walked to the door.
"Don"t drive off and leave me here," Dart said, only half joking.
The temptation bit deep, but where would I go? I picked the photograph, in an envelope, out of the door pocket, where I"d placed it, and returned to the drawing room.
Marjorie took out the photograph and looked at it uncomprehendingly. "What does it mean?"
"I"ll explain," I said, "but if Conrad"s coming, I"ll wait until he gets here."
The distance from Conrad"s house to Marjorie"s was short. He came very soon and, to my relief, without Keith. He came armed, though, carrying a shotgun, the landowner"s friend. He carried it not broken open, over his arm, as one should, but straightened, and ready.
He brushed past the manservant, who had opened the door for him and was saying, "Lord Stratton, madam," punctiliously, and strode across Marjorie"s pale Chinese carpet, coming to a halt in front of me with the twin barrels pointing my way.
I rose to my feet. Barely three paces lay between us.
He held the gun not as if aiming at flying birds but down at his waist, easily familiar with shots from the hip. At that distance he couldn"t miss a mosquito.
"You"re a liar and a thief." He was growling with fury, his fingers frighteningly unsteady in the region of the trigger.
I didn"t deny the charge. I looked past him and his gun to the photograph Marjorie held, and he followed my gaze. He recognised the picture and the look he gave me was as murderous as any of Keith"s. The barrels aimed straight at my chest.
"Conrad," Marjorie said sharply, "calm down."
"Calm down? Calm down? Calm down? This This despicable despicable person broke into my private cupboard and stole from me." person broke into my private cupboard and stole from me."
"However, you may not not shoot him in my house." shoot him in my house."
In a way it was funny, but farce was too close to tragedy always. Even Dart didn"t laugh.
I said to Conrad, "I"ll free you from blackmail."
"What?"
"What are you talking about?" Marjorie demanded.
"I"m talking about Wilson Yarrow blackmailing Conrad into giving him the go-ahead for the new grandstand."
Marjorie exclaimed, "So you did did find out!" find out!"
"Is that gun loaded?" I asked Conrad.
"Yes, of course."
"Would you mind... uh... pointing it somewhere else?"
He stood four-square, bullish, unwavering: unmoving.
"Father," Dart protested.
"You shut up," his father said grittily. "You abetted him."
I said, risking things, "Wilson Yarrow told you that if he didn"t get the commission for the stands, he would see that Rebecca was warned off as a jockey."
Dart goggled. Marjorie said, "That"s ridiculous."
"No. Not ridiculous. That photograph is a picture of Rebecca receiving a wad of money on a racecourse from a man who might be a bookmaker."
I tried to work saliva into my mouth. I"d never before had a loaded gun pointed at me in anger. Even though I clung to the belief that Conrad"s inner restraints existed where Keith"s didn"t, I could feel my scalp sweating.
"I listened to the tape," I said.
"You stole stole it." it."
"Yes," I agreed. "I stole it. It"s d.a.m.ning."
"So now it"s you you who"ll blackmail me." His trigger hand tightened. who"ll blackmail me." His trigger hand tightened.
"Oh for Christ"s sake, Conrad," I said, almost exasperated. "Use some sense. I"ll not blackmail you. I"ll see that Yarrow doesn"t."
"How?"
"If you"ll put that b.l.o.o.d.y gun down, I"ll tell you."
"What tape?" Dart asked.
"The tape you helped him steal from my cupboard."
Dart looked blank.
"Dart didn"t know," I said. "He was outside in his car."
"But Keith searched your jacket," Dart protested.
I put my hand into my trousers pocket and brought out the tape. Conrad flicked a glance at it and went on scaring me silly.
"This tape," I told Marjorie, "is a recording of a telephone call of Rebecca selling information about the horses she would be riding. It"s the worst of racing crimes. Sending it and that photograph to the racing authorities would end her career. She"d be warned off. The Stratton name would be mud."
"But she wouldn"t wouldn"t do that," Dart wailed. do that," Dart wailed.
Conrad said, as if the words hurt his tongue, "She admitted it."
"No!" Dart moaned.
"I challenged her," Conrad said. "I played her the tape. She can be so hard. She listened like stone. She said I wouldn"t let Yarrow use it." Conrad swallowed. "And... she was right."
"Put the gun down," I said.
He didn"t.
I threw the tape to Dart, who fumbled it, dropped it and picked it up again.
"Give it to Marjorie," I said and, blinking, he obeyed.
"If you"ll unload the gun and put it against the wall," I said to Conrad, "I"ll tell you how to get rid of Yarrow, but I"m not doing it with your hand on the trigger."
"Conrad," Marjorie said crisply, "you"re not going to shoot him. So put the gun down in case you do it by accident."
Blessed bodyguard. Conrad woke to realities as if in a cold shower, looking down indecisively at his hands. He undoubtedly would have laid down his fire power were it not that Rebecca, at that moment, swept in like a whirlwind, having outrun the manservant altogether.
"What"s going on here?" she demanded. "I"ve a right to know!"
Marjorie stared at her with her customary disfavour. "Considering what you"ve done, you"ve no right to anything anything."
Rebecca looked at the photograph of herself and the tape in Marjorie"s hand, and at the shotgun in her father"s, and at me, threatened.
"Keith told me that this... this..." she pointed at me, not finding words bad enough, "stole enough to get me warned off..."
I said fiercely to Conrad, "That tape is a fake fake."
The effect on Rebecca was an increase in fury. While the rest of the family tried to understand what I"d said, she s.n.a.t.c.hed the gun from her father, swung it round at shoulder height, took a quick aim at me and without pause pulled the trigger.
I saw the intention in her eyes and flung myself sideways full length onto the carpet, rolling onto my stomach, missing the ball of fizzing pellets by fractions, conscious of two two barrels, two cartridges, and no way of escaping a shot in the back. barrels, two cartridges, and no way of escaping a shot in the back.
The room had filled with a thunderous cracking noise, with flame and smoke, with the acrid smell of cordite at close quarters. Jesus Jesus, I thought. G.o.d almighty. Not Keith, but Rebecca.
The second shot didn"t come. I cringed on the floor no other word for it. There was the smell, the ringing echo, and beyond that... silence.
I stirred, turned my head, saw her shoes, crawled my gaze upwards as far as her hands.
She was not not pointing the second of the barrel holes at me. pointing the second of the barrel holes at me.
Her hands were empty.
Eyes slowly right... Conrad himself held his gun.
Dart came down on his knees by my head, saying, "Lee," helplessly.
I said thickly, "She missed me."
"G.o.d, Lee."
I felt breathless, but I couldn"t stay there for ever. I rolled into a sitting position; felt too shaken to stand.
The shot had shocked them all, even Rebecca.
Marjorie, straightbacked, looked over-white, her mouth open, fixed, animation suspended. Conrad"s eyes stared darkly at a b.l.o.o.d.y mess too narrowly averted. I couldn"t... yet... look straight at Rebecca.
"She didn"t mean to," Conrad said.
But she had indeed meant it; an act beyond caution.
I coughed once, convulsively. I said again, "The tape is a fake." And this time, no one tried to kill me for it.
Conrad said, "I don"t understand."