The Edge (39 page)

George agreed to go with the good bad news and hurried off so as to be back at his post when we reached the station.

‘Did you know,’ I said to Nell, ‘that Emil, Cathy and Oliver wanted to share their tips with me?’

‘Yes, they asked me if I thought it would be all right. I do hope,’ she said with sudden anxiety, ‘that you accepted? They said you’d been great. They wanted to thank you. They were so pleased with themselves.’

‘Yes,’ I said, relieved to be able to. ‘I accepted. I told them I’d buy something to remind me of them and the trip. And I will.’

She relaxed. ‘I should have warned you. But then, I guess … no need.’ She smiled. ‘What are you really?’

‘Happy,’ I said.

‘Yuk.’

‘I try hard, but it keeps breaking out. My boss threatens to fire me for it.’

‘Who’s your boss?’

‘Brigadier Valentine Catto.’

She blinked. ‘I never know when you’re telling the truth.’

Catto, I thought. Cats. Sobering.

‘I have just,’ I said slowly, ‘been struck by a blinding idea.’

‘Yes, you rather look like it.’

Time, I thought. Not enough of it.

‘Come back,’ Nell said. ‘I’ve lost you.’

‘You don’t happen to have a world air timetable with you, do you?’

‘There are several in the office. What do you want?’

‘A flight from London to Vancouver tomorrow.’

She raised her eyebrows, went into George’s office, consulted on the telephone and came out again.

‘Air Canada leaves Heathrow 3 pm, arrives Vancouver 4.25.’

‘Consider yourself kissed.’

‘Are you still a waiter, then, in the eyes of the passengers?’

There were passengers all the time in the corridor.

‘Mm,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘I think so. For another two days. To the end.’

‘All right.’

George returned and reported that all three of the Lorrimores had received the news of Sheridan calmly and would go to the hotel as planned, and make arrangements from there.

‘Poor people,’ Nell said. ‘What a mess.’

I asked George what he would be doing. Going back to Toronto, of course, possibly by train, as soon as the various VIA enquiries were completed, which would be tomorrow. Couldn’t he stay for the race, I asked, and go back on the Tuesday evening? He wasn’t sure. I took him into his office and convinced him, and he was chuckling again as the train slowed to a crawl and inched into the terminus at Vancouver.

The wheels stopped. Seven days almost to the hour since they’d set off, the passengers climbed down from the travelling hotel and stood in little groups outside, still smiling and still talking. Zak and the other actors moved among them, shaking farewell hands. The actors had commitments back in Toronto and weren’t staying for the race.

Zak saw me through the window and bounced up again into the sleeping car to say goodbye.

‘Don’t lose touch, now,’ he said. ‘Any time you want a job writing mysteries, let me know.’

‘OK.’

‘Bye, guy,’ he said.

‘Bye.’

He jumped off the train again and trailed away beneath his mop of curls towards the station buildings, with Donna, Pierre, Raoul, Mavis, Walter and Giles following like meteorites after a comet.

I waited for Filmer to pass. He walked on his own, looking heavy and intent. He was wearing an overcoat and carrying the briefcase and not bothering to be charming. There was a firmness of purpose in his step that I didn’t much like, and when Nell took a pace forward to ask him something he answered her with a brief turn of his head but no break in his stride.

When he’d gone, I jumped down beside Nell who was carefully checking other passengers off against a list on the clipboard as they passed. It was a list, I discovered by looking over her shoulder, of the people catching the special bus to check into the Four Seasons Hotel. Against Filmer’s name, as against all the others, I was relieved to see a tick.

‘That’s everyone,’ Nell said finally. She looked towards the rear of the train. ‘Except the Lorrimores, of course. I’d better go and help them.’

I stepped back on board to collect my gear and through the window watched the little solemn party pass by outside: Mercer, head up, looking sad, Bambi expressionless, Xanthe caring, Nell concerned.

Some way after them I walked forward through the train. It was quiet and empty, the racegoers having flooded away, the surly cook gone from the centre diner, the dayniter no longer alive with singing, the doors of the empty bedrooms standing open, the Chinese cook vanished with his grin. I climbed down again and went on forward, past the baggage car where I collected my suitcase from the handler, and past the horse car, where Leslie Brown was leaning out of the window, still a dragon.

‘Bye,’ I said.

She looked at me, as if puzzled for a second, and then recognised me: Calgary and Lenny Higgs were three days back.

‘Oh, yes … goodbye.’

The train was due to shunt out backwards, to take the horses and the grooms to a siding, from where they would go by road to Exhibition Park. Ms Brown was going with them, it seemed.

‘Good luck at the races,’ I said.

‘I never bet.’

‘Well … have a good time.’

She looked as if that were an unthinkable suggestion. I waved to her, the stalwart custodian, and went on past the engine where the engineer was a shadowy figure high up beyond his impossibly small window, went on into the station.

The Lorrimores had been interrupted by people with notebooks, cameras and deadlines. Mercer was being civil. Nell extricated the family and ushered them to their car, and herself climbed into the long bus with the owners. I hung back until they’d all gone, then travelled in a taxi, booked in at the Hyatt and telephoned to England.

The Brigadier wasn’t at home in Newmarket. I could try his club in London, a voice said, giving me the familiar number, and I got connected to the bar of the Hobbs Sandwich where the Brigadier, I was relieved to hear, was at that moment receiving his first-of-the-evening well-watered scotch.

‘Tor!’ he said. ‘Where are you?’

‘Vancouver.’ I could hear the clink of the glasses and the murmurings in the background. I pictured the dark oak walls with the gentlemen in
the pictures with side-whiskers, big pads and little caps, and it all seemed far back in time, not just in distance.

‘Um,’ I said. ‘Can I phone you again when you’re alone? This is going to take some time. I mean, soon, really.’

‘Urgent?’

‘Fairly.’

‘Hold on. I’ll go upstairs to my bedroom and get them to transfer the call. Don’t go away.’

I waited through a few clicks until his voice came quietly on the line again without sound effects.

‘Right. What’s happened?’

I talked for what seemed a very long time. He punctuated my pauses with grunts to let me know he was still listening, and at the end he said, ‘You don’t ask much, do you? Just for miracles.’

‘There’s an Air Canada flight from Heathrow at three tomorrow afternoon,’ I said, ‘and they’ll have all day and all Tuesday to find the information, because when it’s only eleven in the morning in Vancouver on Tuesday, it’ll be seven in the evening in England. And they could send it by Fax.’

‘Always supposing,’ he said dryly, ‘that there’s a Fax machine in the Jockey Club in Exhibition Park.’

‘I’ll check,’ I said. ‘If there isn’t, I’ll get one.’

‘What does Bill Baudelaire think of all this?’ he asked.

‘I haven’t talked to him yet. I had to get your reaction first.’

‘What’s your phone number?’ he asked. ‘I’ll think it over and ring you back in ten minutes.’

‘Thought before action?’

‘You can’t fault it, if there’s time.’

He thought for twice ten minutes, until I was itchy. When the bell rang, I took a deep breath and answered.

‘We’ll attempt it,’ he said, ‘as long as Bill Baudelaire agrees, of course. If we can’t find the information in the time available, we may have to abort.’

‘All right.’

‘Apart from that,’ he said, ‘well done.’

‘Good staff work,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘Flattery will get you no promotion.’

I was looking forward to talking to Mrs Baudelaire. I dialled her number and Bill himself answered.

‘Hello,’ I said, surprised. ‘It’s Tor Kelsey. How’s your mother?’

There was a long, awful pause.

‘She’s ill,’ I said with anxiety.

‘She … er … she died … early this morning.’

‘Oh … no.’ She couldn’t have, I thought. It couldn’t be true. ‘I talked to her yesterday,’ I said.

‘We knew … she knew … it would only be weeks. But yesterday evening there was a crisis.’

I was silent. I felt her loss as if she’d been Aunt Viv restored to me and snatched away. I’d wanted so very much to meet her.

‘Tor?’ Bill’s voice said.

I swallowed. ‘Your mother … was great.’

He would hear the smothered tears in my voice, I thought. He would think me crazy.

‘If it’s of any use to you,’ he said, ‘she felt like that about you, too. You made her last week a good one. She wanted to live to find out what happened. One of the last things she said was … “I don’t want to go before the end of the story. I want to see that invisible young man …” She was slipping away … all the time.’

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day:

Rage, rage against the dying of the light …

‘Tor?’ Bill said.

‘I’m so very sorry,’ I said with more control. ‘So sorry.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I don’t suppose …’ I said, and paused, feeling helpless.

‘You suppose wrong,’ he replied instantly. ‘I’ve been waiting here for you to phone. We would both fail her if we didn’t go straight on. I’ve had hours to think this out. The last thing she would want would
be for us to give up. So I’ll start things off by telling you we’ve had a telex from Filmer announcing that he is the sole owner of Laurentide Ice, but we are going to inform him that the Ontario Racing Commission are rescinding his licence to own horses. We’re also telling him he won’t be admitted to the President’s lunch at Exhibition Park.’

‘I’d … er … like to do it differently,’ I said.

‘How do you mean?’

I sighed deeply and talked to him also for a long time. He listened as the Brigadier had, with intermittent throat noises, and at the end he said simply, ‘I do wish she’d been alive to hear all this.’

‘Yes, so do I.’

‘Well,’ he paused. ‘I’ll go along with it. The real problem is time.’

‘Mm.’

‘You’d better talk to Mercer Lorrimore yourself.’

‘But …’

‘No buts. You’re there. I can’t get there until tomorrow late afternoon, not with all you want me to do here. Talk to Mercer without delay, you don’t want him coming back to Toronto.’

I said with reluctance, ‘All right.’ But I had known that I would have to.

‘Good. Use all the authority you need. Val and I will back you.’

‘Thank you … very much.’

‘See you tomorrow,’ he said.

I put the receiver down slowly. Death could be colossally unfair, one knew that, but rage, rage … I felt anger for her as much as grief. Do not go gentle into that good night … I thought it probable, if I remembered right, that the last word she’d said to me was ‘Goodnight’. Goodnight dear, dear Mrs Baudelaire. Go gentle. Go sweetly into that goodnight.

I sat for a while without energy, feeling the lack of sleep, feeling the nagging pain, feeling the despondency her death had opened the door to: feeling unequal to the next two days, even though I’d set them up myself.

With an effort, after an age I got through to the Four Seasons Hotel and asked for Mercer, but found myself talking to Nell.

‘All the calls are being rerouted to me,’ she said. ‘Bambi is lying down. Mercer and Xanthe are on their way to Hope in the helicopter, which was reordered for him, so that he can identify Sheridan’s body which is being taken there by road.’

‘It all sounds so clinical.’

‘The authorities want to make sure it’s Sheridan before they make any arrangements.’

‘When will Mercer and Xanthe be back, do you know?’

‘About six, they expected.’

‘Um … the Jockey Club asked me to fix up a brief meeting. Do you think Mercer would agree to that?’

‘He’s being terrifically helpful to everyone. Almost too calm.’

I thought things over. ‘Can you get hold of him in Hope?’

She hesitated. ‘Yes, I suppose so. I have the address and the phone number of where he was going, but I think it’s a police station … or a mortuary.’

‘Could you … could you tell him that on their return to the hotel, a car will be waiting to take him straight on to a brief meeting with the Jockey Club? Tell him the Jockey Club send their sincere condolences and ask for just a little of his time.’

‘I guess I could,’ she said doubtfully. ‘What about Xanthe?’

‘Mercer alone,’ I said positively.

‘Is it important?’ she asked, and I could imagine her frowning.

‘I think it’s important for Mercer.’

‘All right.’ She made up her mind. ‘Xanthe can take the phone calls for her mother, then, because I have to go to this cocktail party.’ A thought struck her. ‘Aren’t some of the Jockey Club coming to the party?’

‘Mercer won’t want to go. They want a quiet talk with him alone.’

‘OK then, I’ll try to arrange it.’

‘Very many thanks,’ I said fervently. ‘I’ll call back to check.’

I called back at five o’clock. The helicopter was in the air on its way back, Nell said, and Mercer had agreed to being picked up at the hotel.

‘You’re brilliant.’

‘Tell the Jockey Club not to keep him long. He’ll be tired … and he’s identified Sheridan.’

‘I could kiss you,’ I said. ‘The way to a man’s heart is through his travel agent.’

She laughed. ‘Always supposing that’s where one wants to go.’

She put her receiver down with a delicate click. I did not want to lose her, I thought.

The car I sent for Mercer picked him up successfully and brought him to the Hyatt, the chauffeur telling him, as requested, the room to go straight up to. He rang the doorbell of the suite I’d engaged more or less in his honour, and I opened the door to let him in.