To the Hilt

by Dick Francis

  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?”

  chapter 5

  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.

  Next time you’ll scream.

  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.

  After a while, in which he briefly dozed, he said with weakness, “Patsy couldn’t have been sweeter when I was in the
Clinic. She came every day, you know. She looked after my flowers ... I had so many plants, people were so kind.... Everyone in the Clinic said how lucky I was to have such a loving, thoughtful and beautiful daughter ... and perhaps she was in and out when Robert came, but I can’t think how she thought you had stolen the Cup ... You must be mistaken about that, you know.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  Armed with generous cash from my mother, I trekked back by rail to Reading and called to see the firm of Young and Uttley, the investigators recommended by Tobias. An unprepossessing male voice on the telephone having given me a time and a place, I found a soulless box of an office—outer room, inner room, desks, filing cabinets, computers and coat stand—with an inhabitant, a man of about my own age dressed in jeans, black hard boots, a grubby singlet with cut-out armholes and a heavy black hip-slung belt shining with aggressive studs. He had an unshaven chin, close-cropped dark hair, one earring dangling—right ear—and the word “HATE” in black letters across the backs of the fingers of both hands.

  “Yeah?” he said, when I went in. “Want something?”

  “I’m looking for Young and Uttley. I telephoned...”

  “Yeah,” said the voice I’d heard on the phone. “See. Young and Uttley are partners. That’s their pictures on the wall, there. Which one do you want?”

  He pointed to two glossy eight-by-ten-inch black-and-white photographs thumbtacked to a framed corkboard hanging on a dingy wall. Alongside hung a framed certificate giving Young and Uttley license to operate as private investigators, though to my understanding no such license was necessary in Britain, nor existed. A ploy to impress ignorant clients, I supposed.

  Mr. Young and Mr. Uttley were, first, a sober dark-suited man with a heavy mustache, a striped tie and a hat, and secondly, a wholesome fellow in a pale blue jogging suit, carrying a football and a whistle and looking like a dedicated schoolteacher going out to coach children.

  I turned away, smiling, and said to the skinhead watching me, “I’ll take you as you are.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Those pictures are both you.”

  “Quick, aren’t you?” he said tartly. “And Tobe warned me, and all.”

  “I asked him for someone good, honest and discreet.” “You got him. What do you want done?”

  I said, “Where did you learn your trade?”

  “Reform school. Various nicks. Do you want me or not?”

  “I want the discreet bit most of all.”

  “Priority.”

  “Then I want you to follow someone and find out if he’s met, or knows where to find, four other people.”

  “Done,” he said easily. “Who are they?”

  I drew them for him in a mixture of pencil and ballpoint, having somewhere lost my charcoal. He looked at the drawings, one of Surtees Benchmark and one of each of my four attackers.

  I told him Surtees’s name and address. I said I knew nothing about the others except their ability to punch.

  “Are those four how you got that eye?”

  “Yes. They robbed my house in Scotland, but they have southeast England voices.”

  He nodded. “When did they hit you?”

  “Tuesday morning.”

  He mentioned his fee and I paid him a retainer for a week. I gave him Jed’s phone number and asked him to report.

  “What do I call you?” I asked.

  “Young or Uttley, take your pick.”

  “Young and Utterly Outrageous, more like.”

  “You’re so sharp you’ll cut yourself.”

  I went grinning to the train.

  I spent the latter part of the afternoon shopping, accompanied by my long-suffering mother who paid for everything with her credit cards.

  “I suppose,” she said at one point, “you weren’t insured against the loss of your winter clothes and your climbing gear and your paints?”

  I looked at her sideways, amused.

  She sighed.

  “I did insure the jeep,” I said.

  “That’s something, at least.”

  Back at Park Crescent I changed into some of the new things and left the jodhpur boots, padded jacket, crash helmet and goggles for return to Emily sometime, and I told Ivan (having checked with Margaret Morden) that so far the brewery’s creditors were earning haloes and had agreed to meet on Monday.

  “Why don’t you stay here?” he said, a shade petulantly. “Your mother would like it.”

  I hadn’t told him about the attack on the bothy so as not to trouble him and he hadn’t persisted in asking how I’d hurt my eye. I explained my departure in the one way that would satisfy him.

  “Himself wants me up there ... and I’d better do something about the Cup.”

  Relaxing, he nodded. “Keep it safe.”

  The three of us tranquilly ate an Edna-cooked dinner; then I shook Ivan’s hand, hugged my mother warmly, humped my bags and boxes along to Euston, boarded the Royal Highlander and slept my way to Scotland.

  Even the air at Dalwhinnie smelled different. Smelled like home. Cold. Fresh. A promise of mountains.

  Jed Parlane was striding up and down to keep warm and blowing on his fingers. He helped carry my clutter out to his car and said he was relieved to see me and how was I feeling.

  “Good as new.”

  “That’s more than can be said for the bothy.”

  “Did you lock it?” I asked, trying not to sound anxious.

  “Relax. Yes, I did. In fact I got a new lock for it. Whatever was there when you left is still there. Himself asks me to drive over and check every day. No one is sniffing around, that I can see. The police want to interview you, of course.”

  “Sometime.”

  Jed drove me not to the bothy but, as arranged, straight to Kinloch castle to talk to Himself.

  The castle was no fairy-tale confection of Disney spires and white-sugar icing, but like all ancient Scottish castles had been heavily constructed to keep out both enemies and weather. It was of thick and plain perpendicular gray stone with a minimum of narrow windows that had once been arrow slots for archers. Built on a rise to command views of the valley at its foot, it looked dour and inhospitable and threatening even on sunny days, and could chill the soul under nimbostratus.

  My father had grown up there, and as a grandson of the old earl I’d played there as a child until it held no terrors: but times had changed and the castle itself no longer belonged to the Kinloch family but was the property of Scotland, administered and run as a tourist attraction by one of the conservation organizations. Himself, who had effected the transfer, had pronounced the roof upkeep and the heating bills too much for even the Kinloch coffers, and had negotiated a retreat to a smaller snugger home in what had once been the kitchen wing with living quarters for a retinue of dozens.

  Himself would on occasion dress in historic Highland finery and act as host to visiting monarchs in the castle’s vast main dining hall, and it had been after one such grand evening, about six years earlier, that an enterprising band of burglars in the livery of footmen had lifted and borne away an irreplaceable gold-leafed eighteenth-century dinner service for fifty. Not a side plate, not a charger had surfaced since.

  It had been less than a year later, when a second theft had deprived the castle of several tapestry wall hangings, that Himself had thought of a way of keeping safe the best-known and most priceless of the many Kinloch treasures, the jewel-encrusted solid gold hilt of the ceremonial sword of Prince Charles Edward Stuart, Bonnie Prince Charlie.

  It had, of course, meant taking the Hilt out of its supposedly thief-proof display case and replacing the real thing with a replica. Ever since he had whisked the genuine article to safety, Himself had politely refused to tell the castle’s administrators where to find it. It belonged to him, he maintained, as it had been given personally by Prince Charles Edward to his ancestor, the earl of Kinloch at the time, and had been handed down to him, the present earl, in the direct male li
ne.

  So had the castle, the administrators said. The Hilt belonged to the nation.

  Not so, Himself argued. The castle transfer documents had not included personal property and had in fact specifically excluded the Hilt.

  There had been hot debates in newspapers and on television as to when, if ever, a gift to one man became the property of all.

  Moreover, as Himself pointed out, the Hilt had been given as thanks and appreciation for hospitality, horses and provisions. The facts were well attested. Prince Charles Edward, on his long retreat northwards (after his nearly successful campaign to win the English Crown), had stayed for two nights in Kinloch castle, had been comforted and revictualed, his retinue rested and re-horsed, for which services he had passed on to the then earl the hilt of his ceremonial sword, the blade having been earlier snapped off short in an accident.

  The sword had never been used in or intended for battle: it was too heavy and too ornate, a symbol of power and pomp only. The prince, his dreams shattered like the blade, had left it behind and ridden on towards Inverness, to what proved to be his army’s last decisive defeat at Culloden.

  The prince, tougher in flight, had famously escaped across Scotland to the Western Isles, making it safely back to France. The earl of Kinloch, not so lucky, had been beheaded by the English for his allegiance (like poor fat old Lord Lovat), but had by then passed the splendid Hilt to his son, who passed it to his son, and so on down the generations. It had become known as “the Honor of the Kinlochs,” and Himself, the present earl, though he had had to cede his castle, had finally won a declaration in the courts (still disputed) that the Hilt, for his lifetime at least, belonged to him.

  Since he had “disappeared” the Hilt, the castle had been further robbed of a display of Highland artifacts: shields, claymores and brooches. Himself, in residence in London at the time of that break-in, had made sarcastic remarks about bureaucrats being hopeless custodians of treasures. Ill feeling flew like barbs in the air. The castle’s bruised administrators were now hell-bent on finding the Hilt, to prove that Himself was no better at guarding things than they were.