To the Hilt

by Dick Francis

  Mrs. Morden asked noncommittally, “Your name?”

  He gasped as if amazed that she shouldn’t know it.

  “Finch,” he said sharply. “Desmond Finch.”

  “Ah, yes.” Mrs. Morden looked down at the papers. “It mentions you here. But I’m sorry, Mr. Finch, Mr. Kinloch has an undoubted right to act in Sir Ivan’s stead.”

  She waved a hand towards the certified copy of the power of attorney, which lay on her desk. Finch snatched it up, glanced at it and tore the page across. “Sir Ivan’s too ill to know what he’s doing,” he pronounced. “This farce has got to stop. I am in charge of the brewery’s affairs and I alone.”

  Mrs. Morden put her head on one side and invited my comment. “Mr. Kinloch?”

  Ivan, I reflected, had deliberately bypassed Desmond Finch in giving me his trust, and I wondered why. It would have been normal for him to pass his power to his second-in-command. If he hadn’t done so ... if he had very pointedly not done so ... then my obligation to my stepfather was absolute.

  “Please continue with your work, Mrs. Morden,” I said without heat. “I will check again with Sir Ivan, and if he wants me to withdraw from his affairs, then of course I will.”

  She smiled gently at Finch.

  “It’s not good enough,” he said furiously. “I want this ... this usurper out now. This minute. At once. Mrs. Benchmark is adamant.”

  Mrs. Morden lifted her eyebrows in my direction, no doubt seeing the arrival of total comprehension in my face.

  “Mrs. Benchmark,” I explained, “is Patsy Benchmark ... Sir Ivan’s daughter. She would prefer me out of her father’s life. She would prefer me ... er ... to evaporate.”

  “Let me get this right,” Margaret Morden said patiently. “Sir Ivan is Mrs. Benchmark’s actual father, and you are his stepson?”

  I nodded. “Sir Ivan had a daughter, Patsy, with his first wife, who died. He then married my widowed mother when I was eighteen, so I am his stepson.”

  Finch, loudly and waspishly, added, “And he is trying to worm his way into Sir Ivan’s fortune and cut out Mrs. Benchmark.”

  “No,” I said.

  I couldn’t blame Margaret Morden for looking doubtful. Patsy’s fear was obsessive but real.

  “Please try to save the brewery,” I said to Mrs. Morden. “Sir Ivan’s health may depend on it. Also, the brewery will be Patsy’s one day. Save it for her, not for me. And she won’t thank you, Mr. Finch, if it goes down the tubes.”

  It silenced them both.

  Finch gaped and made for the door, and then stopped dead and came back to accuse with venom, “Mrs. Benchmark says you have stolen the King Alfred Gold Cup. You’ve stolen the golden chalice and you’re hiding it, and if necessary she will take it back by force.”

  Hell’s teeth ... Where is it?

  My ribs ached.

  The King Alfred Gold Cup. It. The it that the demons had been looking for. The it that I didn’t have, not the it that I did have.

  “You look tired, Mr. Kinloch,” Mrs. Morden said.

  “Tired!” Finch was deeply sarcastic. “If he’s tired he can go back to Scotland and sleep for a week. Better, a month.”

  Good suggestion, I thought. I said, “Was the Cup kept in the brewery?”

  Desmond Finch opened and closed his mouth without answering.

  “Don’t you know?” I asked with interest. “Has there been a rumpus, with policemen flourishing handcuffs? Or did Patsy just tell you I’d taken it? She does have a galvanic way of neutralizing people’s common sense.”

  The second-in-command of the brewery made an exit as unheralded as his entry. When the air had settled after his departure, Mrs. Morden asked if by any chance I had a replacement certified copy of the power of attorney, which, owing to Ivan’s foresight in giving me ten, I had. I gave her one: five left.

  “I need further instructions,” she said.

  “Such as, carry on?”

  “I am willing to, if you will give me a handwritten assurance releasing me from any proceedings arising from work done on your say-so. This is by no means a normal request, but little about this particular insolvency now seems normal.”

  I wrote the release to her dictation, and signed it, and she had it witnessed by her secretary as being supplemental to the authorities to act that I’d already given her.

  “I hope to bring together the brewery’s main creditors on Monday,” she said. “Telephone me tomorrow for a progress report.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Morden.”

  “Margaret,” she said. “Now ... these depressing numbers ...”

  I walked back to Pierce, Tollright and Simmonds, where the auditor and I became Tobe and Al and went out for an early beer.

  I told Tobias of the visit to Margaret Morden of Desmond Finch, a tale that resulted in much vicious chewing of an innocent toothpick but an otherwise diplomatic silence.

  “Have you met him?” I asked, prompting.

  “Oh yes. Quite often.”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “Off the record?”

  “This whole pub,” I said, “is off the record.”

  Even so, his caution took its time. Then he said, “Desmond Finch gets things done. He’s a very effective lieutenant. Give him a program he understands, and he will unswervingly carry it out. His energy pumps the blood round the brewery, and it is his persistence that makes sure that everything that ought to be done, is done.”

  “You approve of him, then?”

  He grinned. “I applaud his work. I can’t stand the man.”

  I laughed. “Thank God for that.”

  We drank in harmony. I said, “What was Norman Quorn like?” Norman Quorn was the Finance Director that had vanished with the cash. “You must have known him well.”

  “I thought I did. I’d worked with him for years.” Tobias took out a toothpick and swallowed beer. “The last person, I would have thought, to do what he did. But then, that’s what they always say.”

  “Why was he the last person?”

  “Oh. He was coming up to retirement. Sixty-five. A gray, meticulous accountant. No fun in him. Dry. We went through the firm’s books together every year. Never a decimal out of place. It’s my job of course to pull out invoices at random and make sure that the transactions referred to did in fact take place, and in Quorn’s work there was never the slightest discrepancy. I’d have bet my reputation on his honesty.”

  “He was saving everything up for the big one.”

  Tobias sighed. Another toothpick took a mauling. “He was clever, I’ll give him that.”

  “How did he actually steal so much? I’ve been reeling at the figures with Margaret Morden.”

  “He didn’t go round to the bank with a sack, if that’s what you mean. He didn’t shovel the readies into a suitcase and disappear through the Channel Tunnel. He did it the new-fashioned way, by wire.” He sucked noisily. “He did it by electronic transfer, by routing money all over the place via ABA numbers—those are international bank identification numbers—and by backing up the transactions with faxed authorizations, all bearing the right identifying codes. He was too damned clever ... I may have believed I could follow any tracks, but I’ve lost him somewhere in Panama. It’s a job for the serious-fraud people, though Sir Ivan wants to hush up the whole thing and won’t call them in, and of course it wouldn’t save the brewery if he did. Margaret Morden is the best hope for that. The only hope, I’d say.”

  We refilled the half-pints in suitable gloom.

  I said tentatively, “Do you think Quom could have stolen the King Alfred Cup? The actual gold chalice?”

  “What?” He was astonished. “No. Not his style.”

  “But electronic transfers were his style?”

  “I see what you mean.” He sighed deeply. “All the same...”

  “Desmond Finch says that Patsy Benchmark—have you met Ivan’s daughter?—is accusing me of having stolen the Cup. She’s persuasive. I may yet find myself in
Reading Gaol.”

  “Writing ballads à la Oscar Wilde?”

  “You may jest.”

  “I’ve met her,” Tobias said. He thought through another toothpick. “The fact that no one seems to know where this priceless gold medieval goblet actually is does not mean that it’s been stolen.”

  “I drink to clarity of mind.”

  He laughed. “You’d make a good auditor.”

  “A better slosher-on of paint.”

  I considered his friendly harmless-looking face and imagined the analytical wheels whirring round as fast in him as they were in me. Benevolent versions of Uncle Joe Stalin’s vulpine smirk hid unsmiling intents from presidents to peasants and all points in between. Yet trust had to begin somewhere, or at least a belief in it.

  I asked, “What happened first? The disappearance of Norman Quorn or your realization that the books were cooked, or my stepfather’s heart attack? And when was the Cup first said to be missing?”

  He frowned, trying to remember. “They were all more or less at the same time.”

  “They can’t have been simultaneous.”

  “Well, no.” He paused. “No one seems to have seen the Cup for ages. Of the other three ... I told Sir Ivan one morning about two weeks ago ... he was in his London house ... that the brewery was insolvent, and why. He told me to cover it up and keep quiet. Quorn had already gone away for a few days’ leave, or so the brewery secretaries said. Sir Ivan collapsed in the afternoon. I could get no instructions after that from anyone until you came along. The whole financial mess simply got worse while Sir Ivan was in hospital because no one except him could make decisions and he wouldn’t talk to me ... But the bank wouldn’t wait any longer.”

  “What about Desmond Finch?”

  “What about him?” Tobias asked. “Like I told you, he’s a great lieutenant but he needs a general to tell him what to do. He may say now he’s in charge, but without Mrs. Benchmark prodding him from behind he’d be doing the same as he’s been doing for the past two weeks, which is telling me he can’t act without Sir Ivan’s orders.”

  It all, in a way, made sense.

  I said, “Margaret Morden says I don’t have to go to the creditors’ meeting on Monday.”

  “No, better not. She’ll persuade them if anyone can.”

  “I asked her to root for the race.”

  “Race? Oh yes. King Alfred Gold Cup. But no trophy.”

  “The winner only ever gets a gold-plated replica. Never the real thing.”

  “Life,” he said, “is full of disillusion.”

  When I reached the house in Park Crescent, Dr. Keith Robbiston was just leaving, and we spoke on the steps outside with my mother holding the door open, smiling while she waited for me to go in.

  “Hello,” Robbiston greeted me fast and cheerfully. “How’s things?”

  “I finished the pills you gave me.”

  “Did you. Do you want some more?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He instantly produced another small packet: it seemed he carried an endless supply. “When was it,” he asked, “that you fell among thieves?”

  “The day before yesterday.” It felt more like a decade. “How is Ivan?”

  The doctor glanced at my mother and, clearly because she could hear, said briefly, “He needs rest.” His gaze switched intensely back to me. “Perhaps you, you strong young man, can see he gets it. I have given him a powerful sedative. He needs to sleep. Good day to you now.” He flapped a hand in farewell and hurried off in a life taken always at a run.

  “What did he mean about rest?” I asked my mother, giving her a token hug and following her indoors.

  She sighed. “Patsy is here. So is Surtees.”

  Surtees was not the great nineteenth-century story-teller of that name, but Patsy’s husband, whose parents had been bookworms. Surtees Benchmark, tall, lean and of the silly-ass school of mannerism, could waffle apologetically while he did you a bad turn, rather like his wife. He saw me through her eyes. His own never twinkled when he smiled.

  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 lo
ng 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.