Hot Money by Dick Francis

Author:Dick Francis
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery & Detective, Horse racing, Sports, Fiction, General, Jockeys
ISBN: 9780425235409
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2010-07-06T19:11:34.789920+00:00

Eleven

One of Malcolm’s dogs came bounding across the grass towards him, followed a few seconds later by the other. Malcolm put a hand out of his blanket and patted them, but with more absentmindedness than welcome. After them came Arthur Bellbrook with a face of consternation and concern which lightened considerably when he set eyes on Malcolm. In his grubby trousers and ancient tweed jacket, he came at a hobbling run in old army boots and fetched up very out of breath at Malcolm’s side.

‘Sir! You’re alive! I went to Twyford to fetch some weedkiller. When I got back, they told me in the village …’

‘Gross exaggeration,’ Malcolm said, nodding.

Arthur Bellbrook turned to me, panting. ‘They said you were both dead. I couldn’t get down the road… had to come across the fields. Look at the house!’

I explained about our going to London, and asked him what time he’d gone home the previous day.

‘Four o’clock, same as always. Say three-forty, then. About then.’ He was beginning to get his breath back, his eyes round with disbelief as he stared at the damage.

Nearer to three-thirty, I privately reckoned, if he was admitting to going home early at all.

‘Did you go in the house at any time during the day?’ I asked.

He switched his gaze from the ruins to me and sounded aggrieved. ‘No, I didn’t. You know I couldn’t have. You’ve been locking the place like it’s a fortress since you came back, and I didn’t have a key. Where could I have got a key from?’

I said placatingly, ‘It’s just that we’re anxious… someone got in, they must have.’

‘Not me.’ He was slightly mollified. ‘I was working in the kitchen garden all day, digging potatoes and such like. I had the two dogswith me, tied up on their leads. If anyone had tried to get in the house, they’d have barked for sure, but they didn’t.’

Malcolm said, ‘Arthur, could you keep the dogs with you for another day or two?’

‘Yes, I…’ He looked helplessly at the heap of rubble spilling out across the terrace and onto the lawn. ‘What do you want me to do about the garden?’

‘Just… carry on,’ Malcolm said. ‘Keep it tidy.’ It didn’t seem incongruous to him to polish the setting, though I thought that perhaps, left to its own, nature would scatter leaves and grow longer grass and soften the raw brutality of the jagged edges.

The superintendent, seeing Arthur Bellbrook, came across to him and asked the same questions that I had. Again, they seemed to know each other well, undoubtedly from Moira’s investigations, and if there didn’t seem to be friendship, there was clearly a mutual respect.

The reporters, having sucked the nectar from Gervase, advanced on Malcolm and on the gardener and the superintendent. I moved away, leaving them to it, and tried to talk to Ferdinand.

He was unfriendly and answered with shrugs and monosyllables.

‘I suppose,’ I said bitterly, ‘you would rather I was lying in shreds and bloody tatters under all that lot.’

He looked at the tons of fallen masonry.

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