Dick Francis's Gamble - Felix Francis [102]
“Oh, Jan!” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t want your pity,” she said, quickly turning away from me and taking the marmalade back into the larder.
No, I thought, she wanted my body.
I took a cup of coffee and some muesli up to Claudia.
“You took your time,” she said, sitting up in bed.
“Sorry. I was talking to Jan.”
“Isn’t she lovely?” Claudia said. “We had a long chat yesterday morning while you were out.”
“What did you talk about?” I asked.
“Life in general,” she said obliquely. “Stuff like that.”
“Did you tell her about . . . you know?”
Why was the word cancer so difficult to use?
“I started to, but then your mother came in, and I’m still not sure it’s time to tell her yet.”
“But when will it be time?” I said. “Now seems as good a time as any.”
“I suppose you’re right,” she said. “I just feel . . .” She stopped.
“What?” I said.
“I suppose I feel a failure. And I don’t want her to be disappointed in me.”
“Don’t be daft,” I said. “She loves you.”
“Only because she thinks I’m her pathway to grandchildren.”
“That’s not true,” I said, but I did wonder if she was right.
“And she won’t love me if I marry you and then we find I can’t have any babies. She will then see me not as a pathway but as an obstacle.”
She was almost in tears.
“Darling,” I said, “please don’t upset yourself. OK, if you don’t want to, we won’t tell her. Not yet.”
But we would have to tell her if, and when, Claudia’s hair started falling out.
The rest of Sunday seemed to drag on interminably, with me forever wondering how Ben Roberts was faring with his father. But, as I was still reluctant to leave my mobile phone switched on, I would have no way of knowing anyway.
My mother, with Jan helping, cooked roast beef for lunch with all the trimmings, the wonderful smells even enticing Claudia downstairs in her dressing gown.
“I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I had a proper Sunday lunch in this house,” Jan said as we all sat down at the kitchen table. “Not since Stuart left, that’s for sure. He used to do the cooking.” She laughed. “Can’t you stay forever?”
The lunch was accompanied by a couple of bottles of the supermarket’s finest claret, of which I had just one small glass. Someone had to keep their wits about them. I left the ladies to sleep it off on the deep sofas in the living room while I again went to make some calls from Jan’s office.
First I used her landline to remotely access my voice mail. There were four new messages. All were from Chief Inspector Flight and each one threatening me with arrest if I didn’t come forward immediately to speak to him. He read out a number where he could always be reached, and I wrote it down on the notepad beside the telephone.
But there was no message from Ben Roberts. Perhaps he hadn’t yet found the right moment to speak to his father.
Next, I called DCI Tomlinson’s mobile number, taking care to dial 141 first to withhold Jan’s number from caller ID.
He answered at the fourth ring, but he sounded as if I’d woken him from a Sunday-afternoon slumber.
“Sorry,” I said. “I thought you’d have your phone off if you weren’t working.”
“I am working,” he said. “I’m in my office. Just having forty winks on my desk. I was up half the night.”
“Partying?” I asked.
“Something like that,” he said. “Or what goes for partying round these parts. An abused girlfriend finally had too much and stabbed her boyfriend to death.”
“Nice.”
“No,” he said, “not really. She stabbed him about thirty times with a screwdriver. He bled to death. It was not a pretty sight, and especially not at four in the morning when I should have been tucked up in my bed.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Thanks,” he replied. “But it’s sadly too common round here, especially after they’ve been drinking. I rarely get a full night’s sleep on a Saturday.”
I decided against adding homicide detective to my list of possible future careers.
“Do you have any news for me?” I asked.
“What sort of news?” he asked back.
“Anything,