To the Hilt (11 page)

My mother and I went upstairs.
I
could hear Patsy’s voice from the floor above.

“I
insist,
Father. He’s got to go.”

An indistinct rumble in return.

As her voice was coming from Ivan’s study, I went up and along there with my neat mother following.

Patsy saw my arrival with predictable rage. She too was tall and lean, and stunningly beautiful when she wanted to charm. The recipients of her “Darling!” greetings opened to her like sunflowers: only those who knew her well looked wary, with Surtees no exception.

“I have been telling Father,” she said forcefully, “that he must revoke that stupid power of attorney he made out in your name and give it to
me.
”

I put up no opposition but said mildly, “He can of course do what he likes.”

Ivan looked alarmingly pale and weak, sitting as ever in his dark red robe in his imposing chair. The heavy sedative drooped already in his eyelids, and I went across to him, offering my arm and suggesting he should lie down on his bed.

“Leave him alone,” Patsy said sharply. “He has a nurse for that.”

Ivan however put both hands on my offered forearm and pulled himself to his feet. His frailty had worsened, I thought, since the day before.

“Lie down,” he said vaguely. “Good idea.”

He let me help him towards his bedroom, and short of physically attacking me, Patsy and Surtees couldn’t stop me. Four practiced thugs had been beyond my fighting capabilities, but Patsy and her husband weren’t, and they had sense enough to know it.

As I went past him, Surtees said spitefully, “Next time you’ll
scream.
”

My mother’s eyes widened in surprise. Patsy’s head snapped round towards her husband and with scorn she shriveled him verbally: “Will you keep your silly mouth shut. ”

I went on walking with Ivan into his bedroom, where my mother and I helped him out of his robe and into the wide bed, where he relaxed gratefully, closing his eyes and murmuring, “Vivienne ... Vivienne.”

“I’m here.” She stroked his hand. “Go to sleep, my dear.”

He couldn’t with so powerful a drug have stayed awake. When he was breathing evenly my mother and I went out into the study and found that Patsy and Surtees had gone.

“What did he mean?” she asked, perplexed. “Why did Surtees say, ‘Next time you’ll scream’?”

“I dread to think.”

“It didn’t sound like a joke.” She looked doubtful and worried. “There’s something about Surtees that isn’t ... oh dear ... that isn’t
normal.”

“Dearest Ma,” I said, teasing her, “almost no one is normal. Look at your son, for a start.”

Her worry dissolved into a laugh and from there to visible happiness when from the study phone I told Jed Parlane that I would be staying down south for another twenty-four hours.

“I’ll catch tomorrow night’s train,” I said. “I’m afraid it gets to Dalwhinnie at a quarter past seven in the morning. Saturday morning.”

Jed faintly protested. “Himself wants you back here as soon as possible.”

“Tell him my mother needs me.”

“So do the police.”

“Too bad. See you, Jed.”

 

 

My mother and I ate the good meal Edna had cooked and left ready, and spent a peaceful, rare and therapeutic evening alone together in her sitting room, not talking much, but companionable.

“I saw Emily,” I said casually, at one point.

“Did you?” She was unexcited. “How is she?”

“Well. Busy. She asked after Ivan.”

“Yes, she telephoned. Nice of her.”

I smiled. My mother’s reaction to my leaving my wife had been as always calm, unjudgmental and accepting. It was our own business, she had implied. She had also, I thought, understood. Her sole comment to me had been, “Solitary people are never alone,” an unexpected insight that she wouldn’t enlarge or explain; but she had long been accustomed to the solitary nature of her son’s instincts, that I had tried—and failed—to stifle.

 

 

In the morning, when everyone had slept well, I talked for much longer than usual with Ivan.

He looked better. He still wore pajamas, robe and slippers, but there was muscle tone and color in his face, and clarity in his mind.

I told him in detail what I’d learned and done over the two days I’d spent in Reading. He faced unwillingly the whole frightening extent of the plundering of the brewery and approved of the appointment of Margaret Morden as captaining the lifeboat to save the wreck.

“It’s my own fault things got so bad,” Ivan sighed. “But, you know, I couldn’t believe that Norman Quorn would rob the firm. I’ve known him for years, moved him up from the accounts department, made him Finance Director, gave him a seat on the Board ... I
trusted
him. I wouldn’t listen to or believe Tobias Tollright. I’ll never be able to trust my own judgment again.”

I said, intending to console, “The same thing happens to firms every year.”

He nodded heavily. “They say the greater the trust the safer the opportunity. But
Norman
... how
could
he . . . ?”

His pain was more personal than financial, the treachery and rejection harder to bear than the actual loss, and it was the heartlessness of that personal treachery that he couldn’t endure.

“I wish,” he said with feeling, “that you would take over and run the brewery. I’ve always known you could do it. I hoped when you married that efficient and attractive young woman that you would change your mind and come to me. So
suitable.
You could live in Lambourn in her training stables and manage the brewery in Wantage, only seven miles away.
Perfect.
A life most young men would jump at. But no, you have to be different. You have to go off and live on your own, and
paint.
” His voice wasn’t exactly contemptuous, but he found my compulsion wholly incomprehensible. “Your dear mother seems to understand you. She says you can’t keep mountain mist in a cage.”

“I’m sorry,” I said inadequately. I could see the sense of the life path he’d offered. I didn’t know why I couldn’t take it. I did know it would result in meltdown.

I changed the subject and said I’d asked Margaret Morden to get the creditors if possible to keep the Cheltenham race alive; to get them to realize that the seventeenth running of the King Alfred Gold Cup would underpin public faith in the brewery and boost the sales that would generate the income that alone would save the day.

Ivan smiled. “The Devil would like you on his side.”

“But it’s true.”

“Truth can subvert,” he said. “I wish you were my son.”

That silenced me completely. He looked as though he was surprised he had said it, but he let it stand. A silence grew.

In the end I said tentatively, “Golden Malt ... ?”

“My horse.” His gaze sharpened on my face. “Did you hide it?”

“Did you mean me to?”

“Of course I did. I hoped you would. But ...”

“But,” I finished when he stopped, “
you
are a member of the Jockey Club and can’t afford to be in the wrong, and the creditors may want to count Golden Malt an asset and sell him. And yes, I did steal him out of Emily’s yard but any sleuth worth his salt could find him, and if he has to vanish for more than a week I’ll have to move him.”

“Where is he?”

“If you don’t know, you can’t tell.”

“Who does know, besides you?”

“At present, Emily. If I move him, it will be to shield her.” I paused. “Do you have any proof that you personally own him? Bill of sale?”

“No. I bought him as a foal for cash to help out a needy friend. He paid no tax on the gain.”

“Tut.”

“You can’t see that six years down the road your good turn will bite you.”

The telephone buzzed at his elbow, and he made a gesture asking me to answer it for him. I said, “Hello?” and found Tobias Tollright at the other end.

“Is that you, Al?” he asked. “This is Tobe.” Fluster and insecurity in his voice.

“Hi, Tobe. What’s up?”

“I’ve had this man on the phone who says Sir Ivan has revoked your powers of attorney.”

“What man?”

“Someone called Oliver Grantchester. A lawyer. He says he’s in charge of Sir Ivan’s affairs.”

“He certified all the copies of the power of attorney,” I said. “What’s wrong with them?”

“He says they were a mistake. Apparently Patsy Benchmark got Sir Ivan to say so.”

“Hold on,” I said, “while I talk to my stepfather.” I rested the receiver on the table and explained the situation to Ivan. He picked up the receiver and said, “Mr. Tollright, what is your opinion of my stepson’s business sense?”

He smiled through the reply, then said, “I stand by every word I signed.” He listened, then went on, “My daughter misinformed Mr. Grantchester. Alexander acts for me in everything, and I give my trust to no one else. Clear?” He gave me back the telephone and I said to Tobias, “OK?”

“My God, that woman. She’s dangerous, Al.”

“Mm. Tobe ... do you know any good, honest, discreet private investigators?”

He chuckled. “Good, honest and discreet. Hang on ...” There was a rustle of pages. “Got a pencil?”

There was a pencil on the table but no notepad. I turned over the box of tissues, in Ivan’s fashion, and wrote on the bottom of it the name and phone number of a firm in Reading. “Thanks, Tobe.”

“Anytime, Al.”

I disconnected and said to Ivan, “Patsy is also going around telling people I’ve stolen the chalice, the King Alfred Cup.”

“But,” he said, undisturbed, “you do have it, don’t you?”

After a moment of internal chill I said carefully, “Why do you think I have the Cup?”

He looked astonished but not yet alarmed. “Because I sent it to you, of course. You are good at hiding things, Robert said. I sent it to you, to keep it safe.”

Hell’s teeth, I thought. Oh God. Oh
no.

I said, “How? How did you send it to me?”

For the first time he seemed to realize that however good his plans had been, somewhere along the line the points had got switched. He frowned, but still not with anxiety.

“I gave it to Robert to give to you. That’s to say, I told him where to find it. Are you listening? Stop looking so blank. I asked your uncle Robert to take the damned Cup to Scotland for you to take care of. So don’t tell me you don’t have it.”

“Er ...” I said, clearing my throat, “when did you send it to Scotland?”

“I don’t know.” He waved a hand as if the detail were unimportant. “Ask your uncle Robert. If you haven’t got the Cup, then he has.”

I breathed slowly and deeply, and said, “Who else knew you were sending the Cup to me?”

“Who? No one else. What does it matter? Robert will pass the Cup to you when you go back to Scotland, and you can keep it safe for me until the brewery’s affairs are settled, because like the horse the Cup belongs to
me,
and I don’t want to see it counted as a brewery asset and sold for a drop in the ocean.”

“Bill of sale?” I suggested hopelessly.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“No.”

I asked with artificial absence of urgency, “When did all this happen? When did you ask Himself to take the Cup to Scotland?”

“When? Sometime last week of course.”

“Last week ... while you were still in the Clinic?”

“Of course while I was in the Clinic. You’re being very dense, Alexander. I was feeling very ill and I’d had so many drugs and injections. I was
thinking
double, let alone seeing, and Robert came to visit me while I was worried sick by Tobias Tollright, and he, Robert of course, not Tollright, said he was leaving the next day for Scotland for his annual shooting and fishing, and for the Games, and it made sense to ask him to look after the Cup, and he said he would, but better still he would entrust it to
you
. I asked if he trusted you enough ... and he said he would trust you with his life.”

Hell, I thought, and asked, “Which day was that?”

“I can’t possibly remember. Why do you think it matters?”

His own illness had been painful and traumatic but he hadn’t, I thought, had a lot of fists thudding like ramrods into his ribs and abdomen until he could hardly breathe, he hadn’t been head-butted and bounced half unconscious down a mountain and he hadn’t spent three days bruised, aching and sorry for himself, swallowing Keith Robbiston’s pills to make life tolerable.

By that Friday morning, as it happened, the waves of overall malaise had receded; only individual spots were at that point sore to the touch. I felt more or less normal.

I relaxed into my chair and asked conversationally, “Did you tell Patsy that I was looking after the Cup?”

Ivan said, “I do wish you and Patsy could like each other. Your dear mother and I are so fond of each other, but with our children we are not a successful family. You and Patsy both have such strong characters, it’s such a shame you can’t be friends.”

“Yes, I’m sorry,” I said, and it was true that I was. I would actually have liked to have a sister. I went on, “She did, though, tell Desmond Finch that I’d stolen the Cup, and he believes it and is spreading it about, which is unfortunate.”

“Oh, Desmond,” Ivan said indulgently. “Such a good man in so many ways. I rely on him, you know, to get things done. He’s thorough, which so many people are not these days. At least through all this troubling time I can be sure that the brewing and sales are running as they should.”

“Yes,” I said.

The spurt of returning health that had carried Ivan through the morning began to fade, and we sat quietly together, taking life at his pace, which was slow to negligible. I asked him if I could bring him anything, like coffee, but he said not.