Read Online Reflex by Dick Francis - Free Book Online Page B

“But here I am,” I’d protested, and I’d been told, “Ah yes, but you don’t have a piece of paper to prove it, do you?” There had been affidavits by the ton and miles of red tape, and I’d missed the race I’d been offered in France by the time I got permission to go there.
    Owing to my grandmother’s vagueness about when she had received her daughter’s letter, the detectives had all scoured Somerset House for records of Amanda Nore, aged between ten and twenty-five, possibly born in Sussex. In spite of the fairly unusual name, they had all completely failed.
    I sucked my teeth, thinking that I could do better than that about her age.
    She couldn’t have been born before I went to live with Duncan and Charlie, because I’d seen my mother fairly often before that, about five or six times a year, and often for a week at a time, and I would have known if she’d had a child. The people she left me with used to talk about her when they thought I wasn’t listening, and I gradually understood what I remembered their saying, though sometimes not for years afterwards; but none of them, ever, had hinted that she was pregnant.
    That meant that I was at least twelve when Amanda was born; and consequently she couldn’t at present be older than eighteen.
    At the other end of things she couldn’t possibly be as young as ten. My mother, I was sure, had died sometime between Christmas and my eighteenth birthday. She might have been desperate enough at that time to write to her own mother and send her the photograph. Amanda in the photograph had been three . . . so Amanda, if she was still alive, would be at least fifteen.
    Sixteen or seventeen, most likely. Born during the three years when I hadn’t seen my mother at all, when I’d lived with Duncan and Charlie.
    I went back to the reports . . .
    All three detectives had been given the last knownaddress of Caroline Nore, Amanda’s mother: Pine Woods Lodge, Mindle Bridge, Sussex. All three had trekked there “to make enquiries.”
    Pine Woods Lodge, they rather plaintively reported, was not as the name might suggest a small private hotel complete with guest register going back umpteen years, forwarding addresses attached. Pine Woods Lodge was an old Georgian mansion gone to ruin and due to be demolished. There were trees growing in what had been the ballroom. Large sections had no roof.
    It was owned by a family which had largely died out twenty-five years earlier, leaving distant heirs who had no wish and no money to keep the place up. They had let the house at first to various organizations (list attached, supplied by real estate agents) but more recently it had been inhabited by squatters and vagrants. The dilapidation was now so advanced that even such as they had moved out, and the five acres the house was built on were to come up for auction within three months: but as whoever bought the land was going to have to demolish the mansion, it was not expected to fetch much of a price.
    I read through the list of tenants, none of whom had stayed long. A nursing home. A sisterhood of nuns. An artists’ commune. A boys’ youth club adventure project. A television film company. A musicians’ cooperative. Colleagues of Supreme Grace. The Confidential Mail Order Corporation.
    One of the detectives, persevering, had investigated the tenants as far as he could, and had added unflattering comments.
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    Nursing home —— Euthanasia for all.
Closed by council.
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    Nuns —— Disbanded through bitchiness.
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    Artists —— Left disgusting murals.
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    Boys —— Broke everything still whole.
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    TV —— Needed a ruin to film.
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    Musicians —— Fused all the electricity.
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    Colleagues —— Religious nuts.
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    Mail order —— Perverts’ delights.
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    There were no dates attached to the