Decider - By Dick Francis Page 0,47
for some fireworks!’ I looked at his impish enjoyment. ‘Did Keith really kick you?’ he asked. ‘Ivan says I missed a real pretty sight by a few seconds.’
‘Too bad. Where’s the architect?’
‘That man beside Conrad.’
‘And is he a blackmailer?’
‘God knows. Ask Keith.’
He knew as well as I did that I wouldn’t ask Keith anything.
‘I reckon Keith made that up,’ Dart said. ‘He’s a terrible bar. He can’t tell the truth.’
‘And Conrad? Does he lie?’
‘My father?’ Dart showed no anger at the possible slur. ‘My father tells the truth on principle. Or else from lack of imagination. Take your pick.’
‘The twins at the fork in the road,’ I said.
‘What the heck are you talking about?’
‘Tell you later.’
Marjorie was saying formidably, ‘We do not need an architect.’
‘Face facts,’ Conrad pleaded. ‘Look at this radical destruction. It’s a heaven-sent opportunity to build something meaningful.’
Build something meaningful. The words vibrated in memory. Build something meaningful had been one of the precepts repeated ad nauseam by a lecturer at college.
I looked carefully at Conrad’s architect, turning the inward eye back more than sixteen years. Conrad’s architect, I slowly realised, had been a student like myself at the Architectural Association School of Architecture: senior to me, one of the élite, a disciple of the future. I remembered his face and his glittering prospects, and I’d forgotten his name.
Roger left my side and went across to put in a presence at the Marjorie–Conrad conflict, a hopeless position for a manager. Conrad’s architect nodded to him coolly, seeing Roger as critic, not ally.
Dart, waving a hand towards the rubble, asked me, ‘What do you think they should do?’
‘I, personally?’
‘Yes.’
‘They don’t care what I think.’
‘But I’m curious.’
‘I think they should spend their time finding out who did it, and why.’
‘But the police will do that.’
‘Are you saying that the family doesn’t want to find out?’
Dart said, alarmed, ‘Can you see through brick?’
‘Why don’t they want to know? I wouldn’t think it safe not to.’
‘Marjorie will do anything to keep family affairs private,’ Dart said. ‘She’s worse than Grandfather, and he would pay the earth to keep the Stratton name clean.’
Keith must have cost them a packet, I thought, from my own mother onwards; and I wondered fleetingly again what Forsyth could have done to cause them such angst.
Dart looked at his watch. ‘Twenty to twelve,’ he said. ‘I’m fed up with all this. What do you say to the Mayflower?’
On reflection I said yes to the Mayflower, and without fanfare retreated with him to the green six-year-old Granada with rusted near wings. Harold Quest, it seemed, never interfered with exits. We made an unhindered passage to imitation AD 1620, where Dart accepted a half-pint and I also ordered fifteen fat rounds of cheese, tomato, ham and lettuce home-made sandwiches and a quart tub of ice cream.
‘You can’t be that hungry!’ Dart exclaimed.
‘I’ve five beaks to fill.’
‘Good God! I’d forgotten.’
We drank the beer while waiting for the sandwiches, and then he good-naturedly drove us down through the back entrance to park outside Roger’s house, near the bus.
Beside the main door into the bus, in a small outside compartment, I’d long ago installed a chuck-wagon-type bell. Dart watched in amusement when I extended it on its arm outwards, and set it clanging with vigour.
The cowboys came in from the prairie, hungry, dry and virtuous, and sat around on boxes and logs for their open-air lunch. I stood with the walking frame. Getting used to it, the boys took it for granted.
They had built a stockade from sticks, they said. Inside the fort were the United States cavalry (Christopher and Toby) and outside were the Indians (the rest). The Indians were (of course) the Good Guys, who hoped to overrun the stockade and take a few scalps. Sneaky tactics were needed, Chief Edward said. Alan Redfeather was his trusty spy.
Dart, eating a sandwich, said he thought Neil’s lurid warpaint (Mrs Gardner’s lipstick) a triumph for political correctness.
None of them knew what he meant. I saw Neil storing the words away, mouthing them silently, ready to ask later.
Locust-like, they mopped up the Mayflower’s food and, as it seemed a good time for it, I said to them, ‘Ask Dart the riddle of the pilgrim. He’ll find it interesting.’
Christopher obligingly began, ‘A pilgrim came to a fork in the road. One road led to safety, and the other to death. In each fork stood a guardian.’
‘They were twins,’ Edward said.
Christopher, nodding, went on, ‘One twin always spoke the truth and the other always lied.’
Dart