Free Death Trance by Graham Masterton Page B

Police Chief.’
    He picked up the white cordless telephone beside the silver coffee pot and asked for a second time to be put through to the cottage on Lac aux Ecorces. There was a radio-telephone link from Hebertville, although that was nearly thirty-five miles to the north of the lake and reception was sometimes fuzzy and erratic. After ten minutes the operator called back to say that she could rouse no response from Lac aux Ecorces but that she would keep trying at regular fifteen-minute intervals and let him know when she had managed to get through.
    Randolph finished his toast, swallowed the last of his coffee and brushed off his white summer trousers. A Tennessee warbler, green-backed and white-fronted, perched on the balcony railing, cocked its head to one side and sang chip chip chip before suddenly flying away.
    Randolph's valet, Charles, came in, a grey-haired black man who had served Randolph's father for almost thirty years. Charles, as far as Randolph was concerned, was part of the family, even though Charles himself liked to live in the past and distanced himself from his employers with petty courtesies and unsolicited attentions. Randolph often teased Charles by saying that he would have been the despair of Martin Luther King, Jr., but Charles in return would make a show of not thinking that this was a funny joke at all, particularly since the civil rights leader had died in Memphis, at the Lorraine Motel on Mulberry Street.
    'Are you going out now, sir?’ Charles asked. He rarely smiled. He reminded Randolph of Dred Scott, or at least of the history-book picture of Dred Scott. Charles, however, would never have such an influence on American life. As far as Charles was concerned, there was a way things should be done: the old way, prior to freedom marches and school bussing and James Meredith.
    'I'm going down to Cotton Row for beginners,’ Randolph said as Charles helped him into his coat. 'Then I'm lunching at Grisanti's. As far as the afternoon is concerned, well, that's open-ended. But you can call Wanda if you need to know where I am.’
    Charles fussily brushed Randolph's shoulders with a leather-backed brush.
    'Listen, Charles, dandruff doesn't show up on a white jacket.’
    'Sir, you don't have dandruff.’
    'Then why are you brushing me?’
    'A gentleman's valet always brush a gentleman before a gentleman go out. That's the rule,’ said Charles.
    'Who makes the rules around here? Me or you?’
    'Those are the kind of rules that nobody make. Those are ettykett.’
    Herbert, the chauffeur, was waiting in the semicircular asphalt driveway outside Clare Castle in a silver-grey Chrysler New Yorker. Herbert was another of Clare Cottonseed's old retainers. He had a face grizzled up like a red cabbage, white hair that was always firmly greased back and a voice as deep and smooth as the silt that poured down the Mississippi. He opened the car door for Randolph and handed him The Wall Street Journal. 'Sorry about the car, sir. The Cadillac won't take longer to repair than two or three days.’
    Randolph settled into his seat. 'You must tell me about that.’
    'Well, sir,’ said Herbert as they started off, 'I couldn't really explain it. I was heading towards the airport on Lamar, all ready to pick you up, with chilled cocktails sitting in the cabinet, and then just when I was turning on to Airways, the brakes failed and I couldn't stop her, two and a half tons of limousine. I ended up halfway down the bank, lucky not to turn over.’
    Randolph said, 'Brake failure. That's not common, is it?’
    'In a Cadillac limousine, sir? They have dual hydraulic master cylinders, tandem vacuum power boosters, ventilated discs in the front, duo servo drums in the back, four hundred twenty-five square inches swept area, believe me.’ 'What did the mechanic have to say?’ Herbert glanced up at Randolph in the rearview mirror. The mechanic laughed, sir, to my chagrin.’ 'But he couldn't say why the brakes failed?’ 'No,