Lord,’ he said, astonished, ‘haven’t you left it too late?’
‘Maybe. We’ll see. I’ll have three or four years, perhaps. Better than not trying.’
‘You amaze me.’ He reflected. ‘Come to think of it, you’ve constantly amazed me since you came to Newmarket Sales. It seems I hardly knew you before.’
‘That’s how I feel nbout you,’ I said, ‘and about all of the family.’
We set off homewards later the same day, travelling west via Singapore. Malcolm’s gold share broker happened to be going there at the same time, so I changed places with him on the aeroplane and let the two of them say things like ‘percussion and rotary air blast drilling to get a first idea’ and ‘diamond core drilling is necessary for estimating reserves accurately’, which seemed to entertain them for hours.
I thought meantime about invitations. About invitations like meat over bear pits. The right invitation would bring the right visitor. The problem was how to make the invitation believable.
Part of the trouble was time. When we reached England, Malcolm would have been out of harm’s way for four weeks, and I for almost three. We’d been safe, and I’d had time to reflect: those on the plus side. On the minus, as far as the invitation was concerned, was the fact that it would be six weeks since Malcolm had survived in the garage, and ten since Moira had died. Would a classic trap invitation work after so long an interval? Only one thing to do: try it and see.
Malcolm’s voice was saying,’… a section assaying five point eight grams per tonne’ and a bit later,’… Big Bell’s plant milling oxide and soft rock’, and’… the future is good in Queensland, with those epithermal gold zones at Woolgar’. The broker listened and nodded and looked impressed. My old man, I thought, really knows his stuff. He’d told me at one point on our journeyings that there were roughly twenty-five hundred active gold mines in Australia and that it would soon rival or even surpass Canada as a producer. I hadn’t known gold was big in Canada. I was ignorant, he said. Canada had so far come regularly second to South Africa in the non-communist world.
We’d taught each other quite a lot, I thought, in one way and another.
I would need someone to deliver the invitation. Couldn’t do it myself.
‘Market capitalisation per ounce…’ I heard the broker saying in snatches, and’… in situ reserves based on geological interpretation…’
I knew who could deliver the invitation. The perfect person.
‘As open-cut mining cost as little as two hundred Australian dollars an ounce …’
Bully for open-cut mining, I thought, and drifted to sleep.
We left spring behind in Australia on Wednesday and came home to winter on Friday in England. Malcolm and I went back to the Ritz as Mr and Mr Watson and he promised with utmost sincerity that he wouldn’t telephone anyone, not even his London broker. I went shopping in the afternoon and then confounded him at the brandy and cigar stage late that evening by getting through to Joyce.
‘But you said…’ he hissed as he heard her voice jump as usual out of the receiver.
‘Listen,’ I hissed back. ‘Hello, Joyce.’
‘Darling! Where are you? What are you doing? Where’s your father?’
‘In Australia,’ I said.
‘What?’ she yelled.
‘Looking at gold mines,’ I said.
It made sense to her, as it would make sense to them all.
‘He went to California, I saw it in the paper,’ she said. ‘Blue Clancy won a race.’
‘We went to Australia afterwards.’
‘We? Darling, where are you now?’
‘It doesn’t matter where I am,’ I said. ‘To make it safe for us to come home, will you help to find out who killed Moira?’
‘But darling, the police have been trying for weeks… and anyway, Ferdinand says it has to be Arthur Bellbrook.’
‘It’s not Arthur Bellbrook,’ I said.
‘Why not?’ She sounded argumentative, still wanting it to be Arthur, wanting it to be the intruder from outside. ‘He could have done it easily. Ferdinand says he could have done everything. It has to be him. He had a shot-gun, Ferdinand says.’
I said, ‘Arthur didn’t use his shot-gun. More importantly, he wouldn’t have made a timing device exactly like we’d made as children, and he hadn’t a motive.’
‘He could have detested Moira.’
‘Absolutely,’ I said, ‘but why should he want to kill Malcolm, whom he liked? I saw his face when he found Malcolm was alive that morning after the bomb, and he was genuinely glad.’
‘Everyone wants it to be Arthur Bellbrook,’ she said obstinately. ‘He found