night I was certainly not driving the car that nearly ran us over.’
West said stolidly, ‘I’ll write you down as being cleared of primary involvement. That’s all I can do with any of your family, Mr Pembroke.’ He finished the sentence looking at Malcolm who said, ‘Hired assassin’ between his teeth, and West nodded, if any of them hired a good professional, I doubt if I’ll discover it.’
I thought good assassins used rifles,’ I said.
‘Some do. Most don’t. They pick their own way. Some use knives. Some garotte. I knew of one who used to wait at traffic lights along his victim’s usual route to work. One day, the lights would be red, the victim would stop. The assassin tapped on the window, asking a question… or so it’s supposed. The victim wound down the window and the assassin shot him point blank in the head. By the time the lights turned green and the cars behind started tooting their horns, the assassin had long gone.’
‘Did they ever catch him?’ I asked.
West shook his head. ‘Eight prominent businessmen were killed that way within two years. Then it stopped. No one knows why. My guess is the assassin lost his nerve. It happens in every profession.’
I thought of jump jockeys to whom it had happened almost overnight, and I supposed it occurred in stockbrokers also. Any profession, as he said.
‘Or someone bumped him off because he knew too much,’ Malcolm said.
‘That too is possible.’ West looked at the list. ‘After Mrs Joyce?’
Malcolm said sourly, ‘The lady you so artfully photographed me with at the instigation of, as you call her, Mrs Joyce.’
The West eyebrows slowly rose. ‘Miss Alicia Sandways? With, if I remember, two little boys?’
‘The little boys are now thirty-five and thirty-two,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ He sighed. ‘As I said, I recently dug out that file. I didn’t realise that… er… Well, so we have wife number three, Mrs Alicia Pembroke. And her children?’
Malcolm said, ‘The two boys, Gervase and Ferdinand. I formally adopted them when I married their mother, and changed their surname to Pembroke. Then we had little Serena,’ his face softened, ‘and it was for her I put up with Alicia’s tantrums the last few years we were together. Alicia was a great mistress but a rotten wife. Don’t ask me why. I indulged her all the time, let her do what she liked with my house, and in the end nothing would please her.’ He shrugged. ‘I gave her a generous divorce settlement, but she was very bitter. I wanted to keep little Serena… and Alicia screamed that she supposed I didn’t want the boys because they were illegitimate. She fought in the courts for Serena, and she won… She filled all her children’s heads with bad feelings for me.’ The old hurt plainly showed. ‘Serena did suggest coming back to look after me when Coochie was killed, but it wasn’t necessary because Moira was there. When Moira was killed, she offered again. It was kind of Serena. She’s a nice girl, really, but Alicia tries to set her against me.’
West, in a pause that might or might not have been sympathetic, wrote after Alicia’s name:
Gervase. Illegitimate at birth, subsequently adopted
Ferdinand. The same
Serena. Legitimate
‘Are they married?’ he asked.
‘Gervase has a wife called Ursula,’ I said. ‘I don’t know her well, because when I see them they’re usually together and it’s always Gervase who does the talking. They too, like Thomas, have two little girls.’
West wrote it down.
‘Ferdinand,’ I said, ‘has married two raving beauties in rapid succession. The first, American, has gone back to the States. The second one, Deborah, known as Debs, is still in residence. So far, no children.’
West wrote.
‘Serena,’ I said, ‘is unmarried.’
West completed that section of the list. ‘So we have wife number three, Mrs Alicia Pembroke. Her children are Gervase, wife Ursula, two small daughters. Ferdinand, current wife Debs, no children. Serena, unmarried… er… a fiance, perhaps? Live-in lover?’
I don’t know of one,’ I said, and Malcolm said he didn’t know either.
‘Right,’ West said. ‘Wife number four?’
There was a small silence. Then I said, ‘Coochie. She’s dead. She had twin sons. One was killed with her in a car crash, the other is brain-damaged and lives in a nursing home.’
‘Oh.’ The sound carried definite sympathy this time. ‘And wife number five, Mrs Moira Pembroke, did she perhaps have any children from a previous marriage?’
‘No,’ Malcolm said. ‘No previous marriage, no children.’
‘Right.’ West counted up his list. ‘That’s three ex-wives… er, by the