Proof - By Dick Francis Page 0,11
can’t tell whether you may be needed for more answers. I will put in my report. Good day, Mr Beach.’
He went out in his slow hunched way, followed by the constable, and I walked after them into the garden.
It was growing dark, with lights coming on in places.
The square of screens had been taken down, and two ambulances were preparing to back through the gap the horsebox had made in the hedge. A row of seven totally covered stretchers lay blackly on the horribly bloodstained matting, with the eighth set apart. In that, I supposed, lay the Sheik, as two living Arabs stood there, one at the head, one at the foot, still tenaciously guarding their prince.
In the dusk the small haggard group of people, all hope gone now, watched silently, with Flora among them, as ambulancemen lifted the seven quiet burdens one by one to bear them away; and I went slowly to my van and sat in it until they had done. Until only the Sheik remained, aloof in death as in life, awaiting a nobler hearse.
I switched on lights and engine and followed the two ambulances over the hill, and in depression drove down to the valley, to my house.
Dark house. Empty house.
I let myself in and went upstairs to change my clothes, but when I reached the bedroom I just went and lay on the bed without switching on the lamps; and from exhaustion, from shock, from pity, from loneliness and from grief… I wept.
FOUR
Monday mornings I always spent in the shop restocking the shelves after the weekend’s sales and drawing up lists of what I would need as replacements. Monday afternoons I drove the van to the wholesalers for spirits, soft drinks, cigarettes, sweets and crisps, putting some directly into the shop on my return, and the reserves into the storeroom.
Mondays also I took stock of the cases of wines stacked floor to shoulder level in the storeroom and telephoned shippers for more. Mondays the storeroom got tidied by five p.m., checked and ready for the week ahead. Mondays were always hard work.
That particular Monday morning, heavy with the dead feeling of aftermath, I went drearily to work sliding Gordon’s gin into neat green rows and slotting Liebfraumilch into its rack; tidying the Teacher’s, counting the Bell’s, noticing we were out of Moulin à Vent. All of it automatic, my mind still with the Hawthorns, wondering how Jack was, and Jimmy, and how soon I should telephone to find out.
When I first had the shop I had just met Emma, and we had run it together with a sense of adventure that had never quite left us. Nowadays I had more prosaic help in the shape of a Mrs Palissey and also her nephew, Brian, who had willing enough muscles but couldn’t read.
Mrs Palissey, generous both as to bosom and gossip, arrived punctually at nine-thirty and told me wide-eyed that she’d seen on the morning television news about the Sheik being killed at the party.
‘You were there, Mr Beach, weren’t you?’ She was agog for gory details and waited expectantly, and with an inward sigh I satisfied at least some of her curiosity. Brian loomed over her, six feet tall, listening intently with his mouth open. Brian did most things with his mouth open, outward sign of inward retardation. Brian worked for me because his aunt had begged me piteously. ‘It’s giving my sister a nervous breakdown having him mooning round the house all day every day, and he could lift things here for me when you’re out, and he’ll be no trouble, I’ll see to that.’
At first I feared I had simply transferred the imminent breakdown from the sister to myself, but when one got used to Brian’s heavy breathing and permanent state of anxiety, one could count on the plus side that he would shift heavy cases of bottles all day without complaining, and didn’t talk much.
‘All those poor people!’ exclaimed Mrs Palissey, enjoying the drama. ‘That poor Mrs Hawthorn. Such a nice lady, I always think.’
‘Yes,’ I said, agreeing: and life did, I supposed, have to on. Automatic, pointless life, like asking Brian to go into storeroom and fetch another case of White Satin.
He nodded without closing the mouth and went off on the errand, returning unerringly with the right thing. He might not be able to read, but I had found he could recognise the general appearance of a bottle and label if I told him three or four times what