To the Hilt

by Dick Francis

  “It depends where you stand,” I said. “It’s gold. If you’re rich, it’s just an expensive bauble. If you’re a thief, it’s worth murder. In between—you balance the greed against the risks.”

  “And to you? To Himself? To Sir Ivan?”

  When I didn’t reply at once, he said, “Al, are you still there?”

  “Yes ... I don’t know the answer, and I don’t want to find out.”

  On Tuesday morning a cold front swept the sky dramatically, clearing away the gray rain and leaving a high washed pale blue cosmos with a northern yellowish tint of sunlight. The bothy faced west, which often gave me long mornings of near-perfect painting light, followed by warm afternoon glows that I’d at first subconsciously translated into mellowing glazes and then, when I found out those pictures sold most quickly, into a commercial technique. I did paint for a living: I also earned money so that I could paint to please only myself, when I wanted to.

  On that Tuesday, on the gray-white underpainting, I lightly drew in pencil the head of a still-young woman, with a face already strongly defined by character, a face of good bone structure, of intelligence, of purpose. I drew her not looking straight ahead but as though she saw something to her right, and I drew her not smiling, not disapproving, not arrogant, not self-conscious, but simply being.

  When the proportions and the expression were near to what I intended, I painted the whole head in light and dark intensities of ultramarine blue, mostly transparent, mixed with water. I painted dark blue shadows round the edges of the canvas, leaving light areas round the head itself, and worked dark shadows round the eyes and under the chin until I had a fairly complete monochrome portrait in blue on light gray.

  She looked as I thought Dr. Lang might have looked forty years earlier.

  I had learned my trade from four different painters, one in Scotland, one in England, one in Rome and one in California, and had watched and assimilated and practiced until I knew what paint would do, and what it wouldn’t. Unable to afford art school, with a father dead and a mother newly married and rebuilding her own life, I had offered my services as cook, cleaner, gofer and dogsbody to the four accomplished painters in turn, asking only for payment in food, a patch of floor to sleep on and scraps of paper and paint.

  After three years of such profitable drudgery I’d received a surprise inquiry from my uncle: What, he wanted to know, would I like for a twenty-first coming-of-age birthday present? I’d asked for the use of a tumbledown shed on the mountainous part of his estate and a pass to give me an occasional game on the local golf course (which he owned).

  He’d given me the use of the hut (once an overnight shelter for shepherds at lambing time), full membership of the golf club and some money for paints. Two years later he’d sent me to Lambourn to make portraits of the horses he had in training with Emily Jane Cox.

  After I’d run from Lambourn he’d moved me from the hut to the sturdier but ruined bothy and had paid for it to be made habitable; and a year after that he’d asked me to take care of the Honor of the Kinlochs.

  I couldn’t have refused him, even if I’d wanted to, which I hadn’t.

  I had all my younger life been in awe of him. It was only during the past five years that I’d grown old enough for a more adult understanding. He had of course taken the place of the father I’d lost, but much more than that he had become friend, partner and ally: and never would I trade on that privilege, either with him or within the family.

  Brooding over my blue woman, I ate a cheese and chutney sandwich and in the afternoon overpainted the background with browns and crimsons, glazing and rubbing together the colors in the method called scumbling until I had a deep rich background that wasn’t identifiably blue or brown or red but which receded from the eye, leaving the face itself startlingly near and clear.

  Tuesday night I slept again on the floor in the sleeping bag and dreamed of colors, and early on Wednesday, as soon as it was light, began overpainting flesh onto the blue bones, working from light areas to dark, giving her strength and brain but not a peach-skin luminous beauty. By afternoon she was a woman who would both excel in an academic world and comfort a strong man in bed ... or so, in my mind, I saw her.

  At about the time when every day Jed could be found in the estate office writing notes on current affairs, I phoned him.

  “Are you OK?” he asked.

  “Any news of Andrew and the Cup?”

  “The poor little bugger swore he didn’t take it. Himself says he believes him. Anyway, the damned thing seems to have vanished.”

  “Are you alone in the office?” I asked.

  “You guessed right. I’m not.”

  “Well, listen. I’m going back to London tonight from Dalwhinnie station. Can you meet me there, and if so, when? And could you bring with you an old bedsheet?”

  “Er...”

  “A bedsheet,” I repeated. “People I see in London will know I am not in the bothy. While I’m in London, the bothy is as secure as one blow from a sledgehammer on that nice new lock.”

  “Al.”

  “I’ve been painting a picture that I really do not want stolen or ruined. Please could you bring a sheet to wrap it in? Please will you keep it safe for me?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said hesitantly, “but what about ... anything else?”

  “No one will find anything else. I just don’t want to lose the picture.”

  After barely a pause he said, “How about nine-thirty?”

  “Perfect. Could you bring Flora, to drive your own car home? You can have the estate’s Land-Rover back.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “How long is a piece of string... ?”

  Reliable as always, he brought Flora and a bedsheet to the station, and drove away in the Land-Rover with the well-wrapped picture and all my new climbing gear and paints and winter clothes (in duffel bag) and also my bagpipes, newly ransomed from the old fleecer, Donald Cameron, on his return from Inverness.

  Jed swore on his mother’s grave to keep my belongings safe (she was still alive) and Flora laughed and kissed me, and with minimum luggage I yet again rocked down the rails and hugged my mother before breakfast.

  The Park Crescent house felt as claustrophobic as it had the previous week. The cleaner, Lois, relentlessly vacuumed, her expression mulish. She and Ivan’s male nurse, Wilfred, had reached head-tossing terms. Edna the cook tut-tutted over the evidence of my hot fried breakfast. My mother put up with it all instead of chucking the whole lot out.

  Although it was by then more than three weeks since Ivan’s heart attack, he had still not summoned will or strength enough to dress in day clothes. As if time had been suspended since I’d left, I found him, in robe and slippers, looking equally exhausted in his armchair. He greeted me with a weak smile and an instant and relieved transference to me of all decision making.

  “That woman wants you to phone her,” he said, pointing at the tissue box, so I turned it over and found Margaret Morden’s number written beside the one-word message—“NOW.”

  I phoned her “now.”

  “Sir Ivan said you’d be coming to London ...”

  “I’m here.”

  “Oh, good.” She sounded relieved. “Can you hop down to my office?”

  “How did it go yesterday?”

  “Quite well. I need Sir Ivan’s agreement. If he can’t come here, perhaps you could carry papers to London for his signature.”

  “Great idea,” I said with enthusiasm, but Ivan flapped a no-no hand and said into the receiver when I held it out for him, “Alexander will sign things. Advise him as you would advise me. He’s fairly bright ...” He waved the telephone away and Margaret Morden said in my ear, “But your daughter ...”

  “You’re talking to Al,” I said. “What about Patsy?”

  “She and that brewery manager, Desmond Finch, very nearly wrecked the negotiations yesterday by crashing the creditors’ meeting. And she had her husband with her ... he’s a
menace. I shouldn’t say it, but if the brewery survives it will be in spite of Mrs. Benchmark. I don’t understand her. The brewery will be hers... You’d think she would be the first to want the rescue operation to succeed.”

  “She wants me, personally, dead.”

  “You don’t mean that!” she protested.

  “Well ... she doesn’t want me to be instrumental in saving the day.”

  “I can agree with that. How soon can you get here?”

  “An hour and a half.”

  “Right,” she said. “I’ll clear the decks.”

  I spent over half an hour with Ivan, during which he told me several times not to bother him with details (such as, would his brewery survive), but he stuck to essentials (namely, the safekeeping of his best horse and his Gold Cup).

  “Bede’s Death Song,” I said casually, and watched astounded as my stepfather’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Look after your mother,” he said.

  “You are not going to die.”

  “I think so.” He wiped the tears away with his finger. “Probably.”

  “No. She needs you.”

  “I am adding a codicil to my will,” he said. “Don’t let anyone stop me.”

  “By ‘anyone,’ do you mean Patsy?”

  “Patsy.” He nodded. “And Surtees, and Oliver.”

  “Oliver Grantchester?” I asked. “Your lawyer?”

  “Patsy gets him to tell her things.”

  I said with dismay, “Did you tell Oliver Grantchester you wanted to add a codicil, and he told Patsy?”

  “Yes.” His voice held defeated acceptance. “Oliver says she’s family.”

  “He should be struck off.”

  “He won’t be, though, will he? I asked him to come tomorrow morning, so please, Alexander ...”

  “I’ll be here,” I promised, frowning, “but—”

  “She’s so strong, you see,” he interrupted. “So sweet and kind. But she gets her own way.”

  “If I were you,” I said, “I would take a piece of paper here and now and simply write down in your own handwriting what you want, and then get Wilfred and Lois in here to witness you signing—unless of course they are recipients”—he shook his head—“and then the codicil would be done and legal and you wouldn’t have to endure any arguments tomorrow.”

  He wasn’t a man to whom simple solutions came naturally. He relied on accountants and lawyers and formality. His first strong instinct was to disregard my suggestion as frivolous, and it was only after about five quiet minutes, during which I did nothing to persuade him, that he saw the attraction of the peaceful path.

  “The only thing is,” I said, “don’t leave me anything. If you do, the codicil will be declared void, as Patsy will say I influenced you.”

  “But...”

  “Don’t,” I said.

  He shook his head.

  “I don’t want you dead,” I said. “Live and leave me nothing. Give me your word.”

  He smiled weakly. “You’re as bossy as Patsy.”

  I fetched paper and a pen from his desk and from across the room watched him write a scant half page.

  Then I sought out Wilfred and Lois, and Ivan himself lightly asked them to witness him signing and dating a simple legal document.

  Ivan signed his paper and held his arm across the wording itself so that his witnesses couldn’t read the details while they themselves signed: and, at his request, they added their home addresses.

  Ivan thanked them courteously, giving their service little weight. With luck, I thought, Lois wouldn’t report within five minutes to Patsy.

  When Wilfred and Lois had gone (heads tossing at each other) I gave Ivan an envelope for his codicil; from cautious habit, when he’d stuck down its flap, he signed his name and the date twice across the join.

  He held out the sealed envelope for me to take.

  “Look after it,” he said.

  “Ivan...”

  “Who else?”

  “If you promise I’m not in it.”

  “You’re not.”

  “OK then.” I took the envelope. Horse, Cup, codicil, what else?

  I was fifteen minutes later than I’d said for Margaret Morden but she made no comment. She wore a wide-belted soft printed wool dress of dark reds and blues, accentuating the fairness of her fine and flyaway hair, and making sure one noticed the slenderness of her waist.

  The creditors, she reported, had worked out a rate of payment that they would accept. Their terms were stringent, which I should expect, but just about possible, if sales held up. The creditors conceded that good sales depended on the brewery’s solid reputation, and they had included the King Alfred Gold Cup race’s expenses in their calculations.

  “Great,” I said. “You’re brilliant.”

  “Yes, but they want a guarantee that if there is any shortfall in the expected receipts for the next six months, Sir Ivan will forfeit the Cup itself. The gold chalice is to be considered as an asset of the brewery, and may be sold.”

  “Is that a fair arrangement?”

  “I’d say so. I agreed subject to your approval. The same applies to the horse, Golden Malt.” She paused. “Some of the creditors insisted the Cup and the horse be sold at once, but the certainty of negative publicity persuaded them to wait. Also no one at the brewery seems to know exactly where either the horse or Cup have got to.”

  “Who’s looking?”

  “Desmond Finch. He is complaining bitterly about the creditors’ terms. I told you he crashed the meeting. It is he who will have to implement the stringent measures. The creditors want the workforce reduced. Downsized; that’s the fashionable term for sacked. Desmond Finch says he can’t run the brewery with fewer people. He wants to sell the Cup.”

  “Um.”

  “You don’t look convinced.”

  “Well... when Ivan took the Cup out of the brewery he made it into the equivalent of a freely bouncing ball. I mean... anyone who caught it might throw it on safely into trustworthy hands, who might bounce it some more... but in its free state it could be caught by someone who would keep it for its value in gold.... That cup isn’t worth enough to pay the brewery’s debts but it is definitely worth stealing.”

  Margaret listened without moving.

  I went on, “Ivan took his Cup and had a heart attack, so he gave his treasure into the keeping of his longtime friend, my uncle, Robert Kinloch. The two men decided to give the Cup to me to look after, but in their trusting way they spoke of that plan in front of listening ears, with the result that four robbers came to my door to find and steal the Cup.”

  “So it’s gone?”

  “No. It wasn’t there. It hadn’t reached me. The four robbers... er... damaged me a bit...”

  “That black eye last week? And all those winces?”

  “Mm... Well, the Cup’s still bouncing, so to speak, and I wouldn’t stake my life on Desmond Finch returning it to the brewery if he got his hands on it.”

  “That’s probably slanderous... What would he do with it?”

  “I’d say he would think it reasonable, if not proper, to give it to Patsy Benchmark.”

  Margaret Morden’s mouth opened.

  I sighed. “Patsy heard her father and my uncle plan to give the Cup to me.”

  “My God. But... surely... she wouldn’t send people to harm you.”

  “She might. She might not. But how about Surtees, her husband?”

  Margaret said, looking horrified, “He was violent enough at that meeting yesterday for anything. But funnily enough, his violent way of speaking... and Mrs. Benchmark’s furious denunciation of you personally as a ruthless adventurer out for whatever you could get... well, they worked against them, and for you. When they’d gone the very senior bank manager put all his weight behind your trustworthiness, and it was he, too, who pushed for the race to be run. He said the bank would make the funds available.”

  I could think of nothing to say.

  “Fortuna
tely the receivables are enough to more than cover the running costs this week. The paychecks will be issued and honored. You have to sign the agreements drawn up yesterday, but if you do, Tobias Tollright will OK the audit, and King Alfred’s Brewery will stay in business.”

  I stood up blindly and walked to her window, and heard her voice behind me. “Al?”

  “Mm?”

  “I thought you would be pleased.”

  I didn’t answer her, and she came questioningly to stand beside me. I put my arms round her silently and hugged her, and finally found voice enough to thank her in a more businesslike fashion.

  She said, “The bank manager said that nothing you have done is for your own benefit.”

  “He’s wrong. What benefits the brewery benefits Ivan, and what benefits Ivan benefits my mother, which benefits me.”

  “Yes,” she said gravely, mocking me, “I do see.”

  She spread out the agreement papers on her desk and showed me where to put my name, bringing in her secretary to witness every signature. She then said she would have copies made for all the creditors, which I would initial, and for Ivan and for Tobias, and for the brewery in the shape of Desmond Finch.

  While all the copying was in hand she asked me why Ivan and my uncle had planned to send the King Alfred Gold Cup to me. Why to Alexander on his mountain?

  I said I supposed it was because of Prince Charles Edward’s sword hilt, and I told her of the ancient Honor of the Kinlochs, and about my uncle’s ongoing disagreement with the castle’s administrators.

  “I’m afraid,” I said lightly, “that now, owing to the incautious tongues of two men who would never knowingly harm me, any number of people may learn that whether or not I may know where to find the King Alfred chalice, I do have in my care the golden Kinloch Hilt, which is infinitely more valuable, as apart from its historical uniqueness, it is oozing with emeralds and rubies.”

  “Al!”

  “So it looks as if it is time to bounce it on to someone else.”

  “Immediately!”