Bolt - By Dick Francis Page 0,84

on the lamp, sat in a chair. Litsi, following, took the other armchair. The library itself was perpetually dark, needing lights almost always, the grey afternoon on that day giving up the contest in the folds of cream net at the street end of the room.

‘Mr Smith,’ I said, ‘can speak for himself.’

I put the small recorder on the table, rewound the cassette, and started it going. Litsi, the distinguished looking gent, listened with wry fascination to the way he’d been set up, and towards the end his eyebrows started climbing, a sign with him which meant a degree of not understanding.

I showed him the paper John Smith had signed, and while he watched drew a circle with my pen round the head of Nanterre in the photograph.

‘Mr Smith did live where he wrote,’ I said. ‘I did follow him home, to make sure.’

‘But,’ Litsi said surprised, ‘if you followed him anyway, why did you give him the last hundred and fifty?’

‘Oh … mm … it saved me having to discover his name from the neighbours.’ Litsi looked sceptical. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘he deserved it.’

‘What are you going to do with these things?’ he asked, waving a hand.

‘With a bit of luck,’ I said, ‘this.’ And I told him.

Grateful for the lift, I went up three floors to the bamboo room to stow away my gear, to shower and change, to put on dry strapping and decide on no more ice.

The palatial room was beginning to feel like home, I thought. Beatrice seemed to have given up plans for active invasion, though leaving me in no doubt about the strength of her feelings; and as my affection for the room grew, so did my understanding of her pique.

She wasn’t in the sitting room when I went down for the evening; only Danielle and the princess, with Litsi pouring their drinks.

I bowed slightly to the princess, as it was the first time I’d seen her that day, and kissed Danielle on the cheek.

‘Where have you been?’ she asked neutrally.

‘Fishing.’

‘Did you catch anything?’

‘Sharkbait,’ I said.

She looked at me swiftly, laughingly, in the eyes, the old loving Danielle there and gone in a flash. I took the glass into which Litsi had poured a scant ounce of scotch and tried to stifle regret: and Beatrice walked into the room with round dazed eyes and stood vaguely in the centre as if not sure what to do next.

Litsi began to mix her drink the way she liked it: he’d have made a good king but an even better barman, I thought, liking him. Beatrice went across to the sofa where the princess was sitting and took the place beside her as if her knees had given way.

‘There we are, Beatrice,’ Litsi said with good humour, setting the red drink down on the low table in front of her. ‘Dash of Worcestershire, twist of lemon.’

Beatrice looked at the drink unseeingly.

‘Casilia,’ she said, as if the words were hurting her throat, ‘I have been such a fool.’

‘My dear Beatrice …’ the princess said.

Beatrice without warning started to cry, not silently but with ‘Ohs’ of distress that were close to groans.

The princess looked uncomfortable, and it was Litsi who came to Beatrice’s aid with a large white handkerchief and comforting noises.

‘Tell us what’s troubling you,’ he said, ‘and surely we can help you.’

Beatrice wailed ‘Oh’ again with her open mouth twisted into an agonised circle, and pressed Litsi’s handkerchief hard to her eyes.

‘Do try to pull yourself together, Beatrice, dear,’ the princess said with a touch of astringency. ‘We can’t help you until we know what’s the matter.’

Beatrice’s faintly theatrical paroxysm abated, leaving a real distress showing. The overbid for sympathy might have misfired, but the need for it existed.

‘I can’t help it,’ she said, drying her eyes and blotting her mascara carefully, laying the folded edge of handkerchief flat over her lower eyelid and blinking her top lashes onto it, leaving tiny black streaks. No one in extremis, I thought, wiped their eyes so methodically.

‘I’ve been such a fool,’ she said.

‘In what way, dear?’ asked the princess, giving the unmistakable impression that she already thought her sister-in-law a fool in most ways most of the time.

‘I… I’ve been talking to Henri Nanterre,’ Beatrice said.

‘When?’ Litsi asked swiftly.

‘Just now. Upstairs, in my room.’

Both he and I looked at the recording telephone which had remained silent. Neither Litsi nor I had lifted a receiver at the right time after all.

‘You telephoned him?’ Litsi said.

‘Yes, of course.’ Beatrice began