Death of a Sunday Writer (9 page)

“That's too much,” he said. “The bill is only fifteen-thirty. Here, let me.” He reached past her and picked up the twenty and offered it back to her. “You put two down, see? One came out with the other, I guess. Here. You would have missed it tomorrow. Have a nice evening.”

This charming, honest waiter had now delayed her long enough to have lost the woman, but Lucy had a small inspiration and ran to the front of the restaurant to the window overlooking Cumberland Street. The new little park was full of people and Lucy stared for too long, trying to see the woman among the crowd. Then she looked along Cumberland and there she was, just passing the Bellair Café. Again, Lucy was inspired and instead of tumbling down the stairs to pursue her, she waited a moment and watched the woman turn north onto Bellair, heading towards Yorkville. Before she turned the corner, she looked behind her several times and now Lucy registerd that the woman had done the same thing on the way
to the bar. Lucy wondered if the woman knew her husband better than Lucy did, and was expecting to be followed. Something like a budding professional pride made Lucy want to avoid being spotted by the woman and, when she left the restaurant, she took a small chance and turned right, then trotted down Old York Lane into Yorkville, crossing the street immediately to the corner of Hazelton Avenue. When she had tucked herself against the wall and looked down Yorkville, she was pleased to see that the woman was still walking towards her on the other side of the street. Lucy moved off into Hazelton Avenue to be out of the line of sight, and watched the woman walk past, still checking behind her. She paused, turned, and pretended to read a menu outside Maxwell's Plum. Lucy moved farther into the shadows as the woman now took a long look up and down the street before slowly moving off to the parking lot.

Yorkville was clogged with summer night cars and strollers, and Lucy felt safe in waiting for the woman to emerge before scuttling in behind to claim her own car. She knew, anyway, where the woman was going, and she followed her, only two cars behind, onto Avenue Road, crossing over to Yonge at Roxborough. It was just ten o'clock. Lucy followed the woman to the entrance of the garage, and waited for her to emerge. Her instructions were to make sure she emerged on foot, then quit. When the woman emerged on foot, Lucy drove home. A hundred dollars plus expenses. Not bad, once she was used to the excitement, but it wouldn't last. The woman was obviously coping quite well or enjoying a minimum amount of freedom, depending on whether her husband was telling the truth or if there was anything to Brighton's suspicions. If Brighton was
right, and if the woman just wanted a couple of hours on her own, then it was certainly possible she had had a date in the bar who didn't turn up, but at the moment it looked as if her husband had nothing to worry about.

Peter Tse was dressed in an elegant cream linen jacket, dark grey cotton pants, and a white shirt without a tie. Noting Lucy's surprise when he appeared to collect her, he said, “My racing clothes. I need pockets. Besides. I've got a date.”

“Who?”

“You. You feel lucky?”

“I'm not going to gamble.”

“You have to bet. Two dollars to show on an odds-on favourite. You'll win ten cents.”

“Or lose two dollars.”

“I'll lend you two dollars.”

“No, I'm not going to bet.”

“Then we won't stay. I'm not being at the races with someone who doesn't bet. You'll talk all the time. I'll give you two dollars.”

“All right, if I have to. I have my own money. How much do I need?”

“Twenty dollars. Two dollars a race, if you lose every race.”

“I won't know what to bet on.”

“Yes, you will. All the nice names. That's what women bet on.”

“What are you betting on?” Lucy asked.

“The winners.”

“Which are they?” She tried to read the list of runners on the race card.

“I'll tell you after I win.”

They were sitting in the bar of the clubhouse, eating hamburgers and drinking beer. Lucy was trying to accustom herself to being continually surprised. In the first place, there was hardly anyone here. In fact, there were several thousand people, about average for midweek at the end of the summer, but Woodbine had been designed to accomodate thirty thousand. Lucy and Peter had parked at leisure in one of the many deserted parking lots and made their way to the clubhouse among a trickle of racegoers, most of them solitary men who looked as if they were on their way to the dentist. Peter took her down to the rail to look at the track and Lucy tried to make sense of the huge boards that displayed the odds, and wondered aloud where the bookmakers were that she had read about. Tse had explained the differences between racing in England and North America, and they had moved to the paddock to look at the horses. The jockeys were just mounting for the first race and they waited for them to file past and out on to the track. A horse called Sweet William had caught Lucy's eye and she found a window and followed Tse's instructions, betting two dollars on him to show.

They seated themselves in the front row of the deserted clubhouse and watched the horses disappear behind the
starting gate. In a few moments, eight blurry coloured patches with legs started off in the distance. When they appeared around the final turn, they all seemed to be fighting for a single space, but first one, then two, then three, horses emerged from the pack and one ran past them in front, as Lucy searched the pack, trying to remember her horse's colours. All this time someone was explaining on the loudspeaker how the race was going — doing it with such authority and in such detail that Lucy guessed the owner of the voice was in the ambulance, keeping pace with the horses on the inside of the track. No one could possibly sort out those coloured patches until they came in front of the stands, not even with the most powerful binoculars in the world.

“How did you make out?” Tse asked her.

“I never saw mine. I don't think he came out of the gate.”

Tse took her ticket from her. “Number Six,” he said. “Third. You win forty cents.”

Watching horse races took practice. “What did you bet on?”

Tse explained how he liked to behave at the race track. “I won't tell you if I win, then you won't know if I lost. At the end, I might tell you if I had a good day. But if I didn't I'll say I did, anyway. I don't want you to know if I won, and I don't want to tell you if I lost. It's personal, see?”

“But you know what I bet on.”

“Sure, but you don't mind. I do.”

“Sorry.”

“That's okay. But if you talk about what you are going to back, you talk your luck away. And afterwards, like I said, you may not want to admit you lost.”

“I'll leave you alone, then. I'm going to find Mr. Comstock. He must be here somewhere. One of his horses is running in the fifth race.”

“You need me?” Tse looked anxious. The next race was only ten minutes away. “You won't be able to get into the paddock, anyway.”

“I'll just speak to him over the hedge, then.”

“Be careful.” A routine warning, as to a child.

She made her way downstairs and strolled towards the gate that led into the paddock. A uniformed guard stood by the gate, and Lucy watched how he dealt with the flow. Here, too, it was quiet, and very few people were going through the gate. Some of those who did wore badges, but others simply nodded to the guard and walked by. Lucy waited her chance, then, when a small group approached the gate, she joined them, matching the last member of the group stride for stride, trying to look rich and bored. Nothing to it.

Inside the paddock, she walked over to the most senior-looking official and asked, “Seen Johnny about? Johnny Comstock?” She looked at her watch and up at the sky while she waited for the answer.

“He's with his horse, I should think, ma'am.”

Lucy looked around the paddock.

“Back there.” The official pointed to a row of horse boxes.

“Does he know you?”

Then, before he could question her further, he was interrupted, and Lucy was past.

Johnny Comstock looked too busy to be interrupted. He was talking to a very old lady in a flowered silk dress and white pointed shoes, evidently an owner. Lucy kept her eye on them from a few yards away; when Comstock broke away, she approached him.

He was a comfortable-looking man with the contented look (more common among sailors and horsemen than in most other trades) that comes from having found an excuse to do exactly what pleased him and make a living at it. If any of her favourite novelists had used a character looking like Comstock, Lucy would have set the book aside as a romance. He was about fifty, six feet tall, flat-stomached, with all his own teeth, brown crinkly hair and a deep tan. He was wearing a tweed jacket, narrow cotton trousers, and ankle-boots. He had seen her hovering, and as he waited under the trees for her to come to him, the sun came dazzling through the leaves, making his outline quiver.

When she began to talk, he listened with the air of
a man who was not committed to the conversation. As Lucy explained herself further, he stepped back into non-involved territory, signalling with movements of his head that while his body was here, his mind was on the next race.

“I hardly knew your cousin,” he said, looking at his watch. “Sorry he died.”

“Do you have any anecdotes about him?”

“Nothing you could use. Now I have a horse to see to.”

“Can I come and see you when you're not busy.” They were walking briskly along the stable row, Lucy having to skip a little to keep up.

“What about? I didn't know anything about him.”

“But you're in one of his pictures.”

“So was the Duke of Edinburgh, probably. Look — we kibbitzed a little. Just around the track between races.”

“Perhaps he mentioned you in his memoirs.” This was her ace. She was betting that anyone with something to hide would want to know what was in the memoirs.

Comstock cocked his head as if hearing a faint rumbling sound, and smiled. “Memoirs?”

“He was writing his memoirs, and I'd like to use them to publish something about him.”

“There's a manuscript?” Comstock was listening harder now.

“It's all on his computer.”

“Trimble had a computer?”

“A word processor. There's a lot of stuff on it, his memoirs, a diary, all sorts of odds and ends.”

“A secret writer? Trimble? What's in the diary? Hanky-panky?”

“I don't know, yet. I haven't read it all,” she added, realising, or hoping, that the unlocked diary might also make his friends anxious.

Comstock did not seem anxious, but, rather, intrigued. “Okay, let's see. I'm tied up for the next couple of weeks. Some big races coming up. Big for me, that is. What's your schedule? You in the office all the time? Trimble's office? Shall I give you a call?”

“I'm keeping David's office for the moment.”

“Same number?”

“Yes.”

“You from Toronto?” Comstock looked at his watch, then back at her, this time with some consideration in his glance, as if he had just noticed her. “Look, I'll try and find time in the next couple of days. You can buy me a drink and we can have a chat about your cousin. How's that?”

“When?”

“I'll call you tomorrow.”

“All right. But don't put me off then, will you?”

Finally, he stopped what he was doing or pretending to do, and laughed. “I was planning to, but I won't. But you know, you ought to be talking to Nolan, Trimble's pal. He'll be the one with the anecdotes.”

“That's what someone else said. Is he here? Have you seen him?”

“He'll be here somewhere. If I run into him, I'll tell him you're looking.”

Another race had gone by before Lucy found Tse back in his seat.

“Are you winning?” she asked, forgetting his reprimand.

Tse ignored the question. “Did you find him?”

“Yes. Not too helpful, though. He had an old lady with him.”

“Yeah?” Tse looked through his race card. “Could be a sign.”

He studied the
Racing Form.

“Are you winning?”

“Shut up a minute.” He turned the pages of the newspaper looking for an item he wanted.

“Are you winning?”

“For Christ's sake, Lucy, leave me alone.”

“Oscar T,” Lucy said.

“What?”

“That was a name on his computer.”

“Bloody hell.” He slapped his newspapers and race card into a pile. “Look after that.” He pressed her shoulder to indicate that she should stay where she was, and climbed down to the front row where a small group of men were arguing. They opened a space to absorb Tse into their group, but he pulled out one of the men, a short grey-haired extrovert in a white leather jacket, and spoke to him briefly. The man nodded twice and replied, and Tse returned. “Oscar Turnbull was a small owner,” he told Lucy.

“Where can I find him?”

“He died around Christmastime. Now will you leave me alone?” Tse went back to his
Racing Form.

“Nolan,” Lucy said.

Tse sighed, looked up, then squinted around the clubhouse.

“I don't see him, but he's always here.”

“Where can I find him?”

“Here. That's all I know. Sometimes I wonder where
the regulars go when there's no racing. It's hard to imagine them anywhere else.”

“If you see him, would you point him out? He's the last on my list.”

“I will. Now, how old was that lady? Old to you?”

“Over eighty.”

Tse traced a route over the newspaper with his pen. “That horse has come nowhere in his last three outings. Now they're moving him up a class. Why would they do that?”