10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [30]
“Fordham says it’s an old trick. So old, it’s never attempted now in motor racing.”
“Well ... what was the plug made of?”
“What would you think?”
I hesitated. “It had to be pretty simple. I mean, almost spur-of-the-moment, after the bullet had missed.”
“So?”
“So how about shoving a candle up the spout, and cutting it off? How about wax?”
My father peacefully tied his unexuberantly striped tie. “Foster Fordham,” he said, “will let us know.”
It was extraordinary, I thought, as we entered the Town Hall for the Bethune face-to-face confrontation, how many people I’d come to recognize in only two days.
Orinda was there, torturing herself, wearing a very short gold dress with a black feather boa that twisted around her neck and arms like the fluffy snake it was named for, and demanded admiring attention. Her green eyes flashed. An emerald-and-diamond bracelet sparkled on her wrist. No one could be unaware of her vibrant attendance.
A pace behind her, as ever, stood her shadow, whose name I remembered with an effort was A. L. Wyvern. A. L., I thought, Anonymous Lover Wyvem. He had looked uninteresting in a dinner jacket at the Sleeping Dragon dinner: in the Town Hall, in a gray suit and a blue shirt, he filled space without making an impression.
Large Mrs. Kitchens, eagle-eyed, in navy blue with purple frills, held tight to “my Leonard’s” arm and succeeded in preventing him from beaming his sickly mustache into Orinda’s airspace. Mrs. Kitchens gave me a cheery wave and a leer—and I would not let her embarrass me.
Mervyn, of course, had arrived with Crystal at his side to take notes. The three witches were helping to seat people, and Dearest Polly, at the sight of us, made an enthusiastic little run in our direction, and bore off my father like a trophy to show him the lectern behind which he was to stand on the platform. Dearest Polly, it seemed, was stage-managing the evening.
As if with a flourish of trumpets the Bethune camp arrived. There was a stir and a rustle in the hall and a sprinkle of clapping. Hooray for adultery, I thought.
Paul Bethune, seen for the first time, was a portly and portentous-looking fifty or so with a double chin and the thinning hair that might in the end confound his chances more thoroughly than a love child. He was accompanied by a busy Mervyn Teck look-alike, who was indeed his agent, and by a nervous woman who looked at the world in general in upward glances from under her eyebrows. She was shown to a seat in the front row of spectators and Dearest Polly, beckoning to me strongly, introduced me to Paul Bethune’s wife, Isobel.
Isobel emitted severe discomfort at having me to sit beside her, but I gave her my best harmless grin and told her she couldn’t want to avoid being there more than I did myself.
“I’ve only just left school,” I said. “I don’t know anything about politics. I understand this is the third campaign for you and Mr. Bethune, so you probably don’t find it as confusing as I do.”
“Oh dear,” she said. “You’re such a child, you can’t possibly know ...”
“I’m nearly eighteen.”
She smiled weakly, then suddenly stiffened to immobility, her face pale with a worse disaster than my proximity.
I said, “What’s the matter, Mrs. Bethune?”
“That man,” she murmured. “Oh God.”
I looked where she was looking, and saw Basil Rudd.
“That’s not Usher Rudd, the newspaperman,” I said, understanding. “That’s his cousin. That’s Basil Rudd. He mends cars.”
“It’s him. That beastly writer.”
“No, Mrs. Bethune. It’s his cousin. They look alike, but that’s Basil.”
To my absolute horror, she began to cry. I looked around urgently for help, but Polly was elbow-deep in wires to microphones and television cameras, and Paul Bethune, eyeing his wife’s distress, turned away deliberately with a sharply displeased grimace.
Unkind bastard, I thought. Stupid, too. A show of fondness