10 lb Penalty - Dick Francis [86]
My father, attending a meeting at the House on Friday morning, found that several certified letters had already reached their targets. In addition, he gave everyone—from the prime minister downwards—a copy of Vivian Durridge’s letter to me, along with a brief confirmation from himself that he’d asked Durridge to think of a way of persuading me to leave. Apparently the general reaction had been relief and relaxation, though Hudson Hurst had insisted there had to be some truth in the dope story somewhere.
“Why do you think so?” my father related that he’d asked, and the only reply had been stutter and dismay.
My father said, “I asked Hudson Hurst if he himself had sent Usher Rudd to Vivian Durridge. He denied it. He looked bewildered. I don’t think he did it.”
“No, I agree.”
I now negotiated a roundabout. Fourteen more miles to Hoopwestern.
I thought about Hudson Hurst, the ugly duckling converted to swan by scissors and razor. On television he was smooth, convincing and read his speeches from a teleprompter. No inner fire. A puppet.
Alderney Wyvern pulled his strings.
How to prove it? How to stop him?
Attacking Alderney Wyvern could destroy the attacker. I sensed it strongly. History was littered with the laments of failed invasions.
I arrived in Hoopwestern at noon and parked in the car park behind the old party headquarters. Polly had told me that the charity, which had owned the whole of the burned double bow-fronted building, had chosen to rebuild it much as before, with new bow windows fronting onto the cobbled square and new shops matching the row at the rear. When I walked in from the parking lot, all that seemed different were heavy fire doors and a rash of big scarlet extinguishers.
Mervyn Teck was there, and greeted me with ambivalent open arms and wary eyes.
“Benedict!” He was plumper than ever. Rotund, nowadays.
“Hi, Mervyn.”
He shook hands awkwardly, and glanced past me to where, on his desk, lay two newspapers, both SHOUT! and the Hoopwestern Gazette.
“I didn’t expect you,” Mervyn said.
“No, well, I’m sorry. I expect my father telephoned to say he couldn’t get down this weekend for the ‘surgery’?” Most Saturday mornings the public came to headquarters with their complaints. “I expect you’ll do fine without him.”
My father, in fact, was busy in London with secretive little lunches and private dinners, with hurried hidden meetings and promises and bargains, all the undercover maneuvering of shifts of power. I hoped and trusted that A. L. Wyvern was fully occupied in doing the same.
A young woman sitting behind a computer stood up with unaffected welcome.
“Benedict!”
I said, “Crystal?” tentatively.
“I’m so glad to see you,” she said, edging around her desk to give me a kiss. “It’s such ages since you were here.”
A great change here too had taken place. She was no longer thin and anxious, but rounded and secure; and she wore a wedding ring, I saw.
They gave me coffee and local news, and I read with interest what the Gazette had made of SHOUT! “An unfair attack on our MP through his son. No truth in this allegation ... shocking ... libelous ... retractions and regrets are in the pipeline.”
“The by-line in SHOUT! says Usher Rudd,” Mervyn pointed. “Vicious little nerd.”
“Actually,” I said as their indignation boiled on, “I came hoping to see Orinda, but she doesn’t answer her phone.”
“Oh, dear,” Crystal said, “she isn’t here. She went away for the weekend. She won’t be back till Monday.”
They didn’t know where she’d gone.
I’d made a short list of people I aimed to see. Mervyn, helpful with addresses, knew where to find Isobel Bethune at her sister’s house in Wales, and as she—telephoned—was not only at home but would be glad to see me, I drove to Cardiff that afternoon and discovered Paul Bethune’s rejuvenated wife in a pretty town house in the suburbs.
I’d never before seen her happy. She, too, was a different woman: the gray lines of