We dined in good spirits, the dreadful morning at least overlaid. He raised his glass: ‘To Blue Clancy’ and ‘To racing’ and ‘To life.’
‘To life,’ I said.
I drove him to Heathrow in the morning safely as promised, and saw him on his way to Lexington via New York and Cincinnati. He was fizzing at least at half strength and gave me a long blue look before he departed.
‘Don’t think I don’t know what I owe you,’ he said.
‘You owe me nothing.’
‘Bloody Moira,’ he said unexpectedly, and looked back and waved as he went.
Feeling good about him, I telephoned from the airport to Superintendent Yale but got one of his assistants: his chief was out at Quantum and had left a message that if I phoned I was to be asked if I could join him. Yes, I could, I agreed, and arrived in the village about forty minutes later.
The road to the house wasn’t as congested as the day before, but fresh waves of sightseers still came and went continuously. I drove up to the gate and after radio consultation the constable there let me pass. Another policeman was at my side the moment I stopped in front of the house. Different men, both of them, from the day before.
Superintendent Yale appeared from the direction of the kitchen, having been alerted by the gateman, I surmised.
‘How is Mr Pembroke?’ he asked, shaking hands with every sign of having adopted humanity as a policy.
‘Shaken,’ I said.
He nodded understandingly. He was wearing an overcoat and looked cold in the face, as if he’d been out of doors for some time. The mild wind of yesterday had intensified rawly and the clouds looked more threatening, as if it would rain. Yale glanced with anxiety at the heavens and asked me to go round with him to the back garden.
The front of the house looked sad and blind, with light brown plywood hammered over all the windows and a heavy black tarpaulin hanging from under the roof to hide the hole in the centre. At the rear, the windows were shuttered and the bare roof rafters were covered but the devastated centre was still open to the elements. Several men in hard hats and overalls were working there, slowly picking up pieces from the huge jumble and carrying them to throw them into a rubbish skip which stood a short distance away across the lawn.
‘Do they propose to move all that by hand?’ I asked.
‘As much as is necessary,’ Yale said. ‘We’ve got a surprise for you.’ He waved to a man in beige overalls with a blue hard hat who came over to us and asked me my name.
‘Ian Pembroke,’ I said obligingly.
He unzipped the front of his overalls, put a hand inside and drew out a battered navy-blue object which he held out to me with a small satisfied smile. ‘You may need this,’ he said.
Never a truer word. It was my passport.
‘Where on earth did you find it?’ I said, delighted.
He shrugged and pointed to the mess. ‘We always come across a few things unharmed. We’re making a pile of them for you, but don’t get your hopes up.’
I zipped the passport into my new Simpson’s Barbour and thought gratefully that I wouldn’t have to trail around getting a new one.
‘Have you found any gold-and-silver-backed brushes?’ I asked.
‘Not so far.’
‘They’re my father’s favourite things.’
‘We’ll look out for them,’ he said. ‘Now, we’d like you to help us in return.’
‘Anything I can.’
He was a lean, highly professional sort of man, late forties I guessed, giving an impression of army. He said his name was Smith. He was an explosives expert.
‘When you first came here yesterday morning,’ he said, ‘did you smell anything?’
I was surprised. I thought back.
‘Brick dust,’ I said. ‘The wind was stirring it up. It was in my throat.’
He grunted. ‘This looks like a gas explosion, but you’re quite certain, aren’t you, that there was no gas in the house?’
‘Absolutely certain.’
‘Do you know what cordite smells like?’ he asked.
‘Cordite? Like after a gun’s been fired, do you mean?’
“That’s right.’
‘Well, yes, I know what it smells like.’
‘And you didn’t smell that here yesterday morning?’
I looked at him, puzzled. ‘No one was shot,’ I said.
He smiled briefly. ‘Do you know what cordite is?’ he asked.
‘Not really.’
‘It was used very commonly as a general explosive,’ he said, ‘before Nobel invented dynamite in 1867. It’s less fierce than dynamite. It’s sort of high-grade gunpowder, and it’s still used in some types of quarries. It