Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,18

an apparently desiccated tongue. ‘I have been unable to sleep … I cannot risk harm to Princess Casilia or anyone around us. It is time for me to relinquish control. To find a successor … but I have no children, and there are few de Brescous left. It isn’t going to be easy to find any family member to take my place.’

Even the thought of the discussions and decisions such a course would lead to seemed to exhaust him.

‘I miss Louis,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘I cannot continue without him. It is time for me to retire. I should have seen … when Louis died … it was time.’ He seemed to be talking to himself as much as me, clarifying his thoughts, his eyes wandering.

I made a nondescript noise of nothing much more than interest. I would have agreed that the time to retire was long past, though, and it almost seemed he caught something of that thought, because he said calmly, ‘My grandfather was in total command at ninety. I expected to die also at the head of the company, as I am the Chairman.’

‘Yes, I see.’

His gaze steadied on my face. ‘Princess Casilia will go to the races today. She hopes you will go with her in her car.’ He paused. ‘May I ask you … to defend her from harm?’

‘Yes,’ I said matter-of-factly, ‘with my life.’

It didn’t even sound melodramatic after the past evening’s events, and he seemed to take it as a normal remark. He merely nodded a fraction and I thought that, in retrospect, I would be hotly embarrassed at myself. But then, I probably meant it, and the truth pops out.

It seemed anyway what he wanted to hear. He nodded again a couple of times slowly as if to seal the pact, and I stood up to take my leave. There was a briefcase, I saw, lying half under one of the chairs between me and the door, and I picked it up to ask him where he would like it put.

‘It isn’t mine,’ he said, without much interest. ‘It must be Gerald Greening’s. He’s returning this morning.’

I had a sudden picture, however, of the pathetic Valery producing the handgun application form from that case, and of scuttling away empty-handed at the end. When I explained to Roland de Brescou, he suggested I took the case downstairs to the hall, so that when its owner called back to collect it, he wouldn’t need to come up.

I took the case away with me but, lacking de Brescou’s incurious honesty, went up to the bamboo room, not down.

The case, black leather, serviceable, unostentatious, proved to be unlocked and unexciting, containing merely what looked like a duplicate of the form which Roland de Brescou hadn’t signed.

On undistinguished buff paper, mostly in small badly printed italics, and of course in French, it hardly looked worth the upheaval it was causing. As far as I could make out, it wasn’t specifically to do with armaments, but had many dotted-line spaces needing to be filled in. No one had filled in anything on the duplicate, although presumably the one Valery had taken away with him had been ready for signing.

I put the form in a drawer of a bedside table and took the briefcase downstairs, meeting Gerald Greening as he arrived. We said good mornings with the memory of last night’s violence hovering, and he said he had not only rewritten the sandbags but had had the document properly typed and provided with seals. Would I be so good as to repeat my services as witness?

We returned to Roland de Brescou and wrote our names, and I mentioned again about telling Danielle and Prince Litsi. I couldn’t help thinking of them. They would be starting about now on ‘The Masterworks of Leonardo …’ dammit, dammit.

‘Yes, yes,’ Greening was saying, ‘I understand they return tomorrow evening. Perhaps you could inform them yourself.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘And now,’ Greening said, ‘to update the police.’

He busied himself on the telephone, reaching yesterday’s man and higher, obtaining the promise of a CID officer’s attentions, admitting he didn’t know where Nanterre could be found. ‘Immediately he surfaces again, we will inform you,’ he was saying, and I wondered how immediately would be immediately, should Nanterre turn up with bullets.

Roland de Brescou however showed approval, not dismay, and I left them beginning to discuss how best to find a de Brescou successor. I made various preparations for the day, and I was waiting in the hall when the princess came