Free The Silver Falcon by Evelyn Anthony Page B

Graham, when I think of that will!’
    He didn’t answer her. What she said was true. His old friend had indulged his vanity the second time around; it was fortunate for him that he hadn’t lived long enough to see Isabel’s true worth.
    Only she had been clever enough to disguise her feelings while Charles was alive. Now her real colours were flying. Richard Schriber stayed on at Beaumont, while he, Charles’s greatest friend, was forbidden the house.
    â€˜I don’t know why you bother yourself,’ his wife said. ‘Let her go ahead – she’ll find out what Richard Schriber’s really like. If you ask me, they’re probably sleeping together!’
    The remark jarred on him. He looked up at her irritably. ‘Don’t say a thing like that!’ he said. ‘She’s just being bull-headed, keeping him around. He’ll go in time.…’
    â€˜Maybe,’ Joan Graham said. ‘But it’s mightly funny him hanging round this long. They’re about the same age; she’s been tied to an old sick man for almost eight months. I wouldn’t be surprised what they were up to!’
    â€˜He hated his father,’ Andrew said slowly. ‘Hated him enough to do anything to get back at him. Even now. If you’re right, Joan, and you may be, then it will be a kind of judgment on her. And since she won’t see me, I can’t warn her.’
    â€˜No,’ his wife said flatly. ‘You can’t. And don’t you fret. You forget about those Schribers and think of yourself for a change.’ She got up, and for a moment her hand stroked his hair. ‘You look tired, Andy. I’m going to make you a cup of milk with a little Comfort in it. It’ll do you good.’
    Downstairs in the office, Richard Schriber was going through his father’s desk. He sat down and began methodically, opening each drawer and reading through every paper. In the bottom drawer there was a flat cardboard file. The name of his father’s attorneys was on it. He took it out and began to read through the letters. When he found the copy of Charles’s will, he leaned back in the chair, tipping it slightly. He put the letters back, replaced the will in the end of the file and closed up the desk. He moved the chair away to its place against the wall. He went back to the study and sat in the big leather chair which Charles used, and lit a cigarette. His father’s library of racing books and references were either side of the fireplace. The Plazzotta bronze of his favourite brood mare, Silvia, with her foal at foot, stood on a table by his elbow. Richard reached out and ran his finger down the mare’s back. Horses. All his life he had lived with horses; seen them, smelt them, been put up to ride as soon as he could walk across the nursery floor. Hunting, breeding, racing. Men with legs slightly bowed, as distinctive in their profession as boxers or footballers. He had always thought that there was a horseman’s face; several varieties indeed. The long, lean huntsman, the narrow foreshortened jockey with his monkey stature, the stable man and the amateur with features slightly bruised and coarsened. Always the talk of horses, the phrases that were part of a language unintelligible to outsiders. The mystique, perpetuated by people involved in what was essentially a tough and money-making industry. His father, surrounded by the sentimental paraphernalia – photographs in silver frames, that solid wall of trophies, paintings and sculptures, reminders at every turn in the house that Beaumont and everyone in it owed their existence to the horse. He had always hated them. As a child he had been terrified.
    He had hunted, the only one among the crowd of local children tearing their way across country who thought the ritual death of the fox was a cruel and disgusting climax to hours of danger and discomfort. He remembered his mother being brought home