"That's heavy," I said blankly.
"Yes. A large suitcase. But then you'd need a suitcase also if you were using cordite. For demolishing this whole house, you'd have needed four times that amount, placed in about four places on the ground floor right against the thickest walls. People often think a small amount of explosive will do a tremendous lot of damage, but it doesn't."
"What sets it off, then?" I asked.
"Ah." He smiled the professional smile that wasn't about to give away its secrets. "Let's just say fulminate of mercury, plus, I should say, an electrical circuit."
"Please do explain," I said.
He hesitated, then shrugged. "ANFO won't explode on its own, it's very stable."
"What's ANFO?" I interrupted.
"Ammonium nitrate fuel oil. The first letters. ANFO for short."
"Oh yes. Sorry."
"So you stick into it a package of something that explodes fast: the detonator, in fact. Then you arrange to heat the detonating substance, either with a burning fuse, or by an electrical circuit which can be achieved by ordinary batteries. The heat sets off the detonator, the detonator detonates the ANFO. And bingo."
"Bang, you're dead."
"Quite right."
"At four-thirty in the morning," I said, "it would probably be a time-bomb, wouldn't it?"
Mr Smith nodded happily. "That's what we're looking for. If it was an alarm clock, for instance, we'll probably find the pieces. We usually do if we look hard enough. They don't vaporise in the explosion, they scatter."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I drove unhurriedly to Epsom but as soon as I let myself into my flat, I knew I wouldn't stay there. It was too negative, too empty, too boring. I wouldn't live there much longer, I thought.
There were a few letters, a few bills, a few messages on the answering machine, but nothing of great interest. If I'd been blown up at Quantum along with Malcolm, it wouldn't have made any vital difference to anybody, and I didn't like that thought very much.
I went into the bedroom to see what I'd got left in the way of clothes and came to the white lace negligee. Well, maybe SHE would have been sorry for a while. I wished I could phone her, but it was forbidden: her husband would answer as he had once before when I'd tried, and too many "sorry, I've got the wrong numbers would raise the suspicions of the dimmest of men, which he reputedly wasn't.
Apart from her, I thought, making a mental inventory, I mostly knew a lot of racing people on the borderline between acquaintance and friend. Enough to be asked to parties, enough for contentment at work. I knew I wasn't in general unpopular. It was enough, I guessed. Or it had seemed enough, up to now.
I had enjoyed being with Malcolm more than I'd realised. I missed him already, and in the twelve days I'd spent with him, I'd developed a taste for spontaneity which made sitting around in my flat impossible. I packed a pair of breeches and a sweater added some limp old shirts to the new ones in the Simpson's suitcase, closed up the flat and went down to the car-park.
My own car stood there, but I took the hired one again, meaning to turn it in some time and return for my own by train. First stop was at the bank to drop through the letter box an envelope containing Malcolm's cheque, with a paying-in slip to lodge it in my account.
After that, I set off again in the overall direction of Quantum, but without really knowing where I was going.
I felt an awful aversion to the task of searching the psyches of the family, but I ended up in a place from where visiting them all would be easy, taking by impulse a turn onto the road to the village of Cookham and booking a room there in an old inn friendly with dark oak beams and log fires.
Norman West was out. I phoned him on the hour at four and five and reached him at six. He said apologetically that he had stopped working on the Pembroke case, there was nothing else he could do. He was sorry he hadn't been able to solve the… er… problem, and should he send his account to Mr Pembroke at the Savoy, or at Quantum House?
"Neither," I said. "We'd like you to carry on working." And I told him what had happened to Quantum and very nearly to ourselves.
"Dear me," he said.
I laughed internally, but I supposed "dear me" was as apt a comment as any.
"So would you mind traipsing all the way round again to ask what everyone was doing the day before yesterday between three p.m. and midnight?"
He was silent for an appreciable interval. Then he said, "I don't know that it would be useful, you know. Your family were unhelpful before. They would be doubly unhelpful again. Surely this time the police will make exhaustive enquiries? I think I must leave it to them."
I was more dismayed than I expected. "Please do reconsider," I said. "If the police go asking the family their movements, and then you do also, I agree they won't like it. But if after that I too go and ask, they may be upset enough or angry enough to let out things that could tell us… one way or another." I paused. "I suppose I'm not making much sense."
"Do you remember what you said to me about stepping on a rattlesnake?" he said.
"Well, yes."
"You're proposing to stir up one with a stick."
"We absolutely have to know who the rattlesnake is."
I heard him sigh and could feel his disinclination.
"Look," I said, "could you just meet me somewhere? You gave my father and me summaries of what all the family were doing on those two days we asked about, but there must be much more you could tell me. If you don't want to visit them again, could you just… help me."
"I don't mind doing that," he said. "When?"
"Tonight? Tomorrow?"
Tonight he was already working. Tomorrow he was taking his wife to visit their grandchildren all day as it was Sunday, but his evening would be free. He knew the pub I was staying in, he would come there, he said; he would meet me in the bar at seven.
I thanked him for that anyway, and next telephoned two stables along on the Downs to ask the trainers if I could ride exercise on their horses for several mornings, if it would be useful to them. The first said no, the second said yes, he was a couple of lads short and he'd be glad of the free help. Start Monday, first lot, pull out at seven-thirty, could I be there by seven-fifteen?
"Yes," I said appreciatively.
"Stay to breakfast."
Sanity lay in racing stables, I thought, thanking him. Their brand of insanity was my sort of health. I couldn't stay away for long. I felt unfit, not riding.
I spent the evening in the bar in the pub, mostly listening to a lonely man who felt guilty because his wife was in hospital having her guts rearranged. I never did discover the reason for the guilt, but while he grew slowly drunk, I learned a lot about their financial troubles and about his anxieties over her illness. Not a riotously amusing evening for me, though he said he felt better himself from being able to tell a perfect stranger all the things he'd been bottling up. Was there anyone at all, I wondered, going to bed, who went through life feeling happy?
I dawdled Sunday away pleasurably enough, and Norman West, true to his word, appeared at seven.
His age was again very apparent from the grey-white hair downwards, and when I remarked that he looked tired, he said he'd been up most of the previous night but not to worry, he was used to it. Had he been to see his grandchildren? Yes, he had: lively bunch. He accepted a double scotch with water and, under its reviving influence, opened the large envelope he was carrying and pulled out some papers.
"Your photographs of the family are in here," he said, patting the envelope, "and I've also brought these copies of all my notes." He laid the notes on the small table between us. "You can have them to keep. The originals are in my files. Funny thing," he smiled, "i used to think that one day I'd write a book about all my cases, but there they are, all those years of work, sitting in their files, and there they'll stay."
"Why don't you write it?" I asked.