To the Hilt

by Dick Francis

  I was leaning forwards, elbows on table, the morning’s pills wearing off. I remembered, I said: and I would rely on Tobe to defend me from the maiden.

  I could joke, he said, but I should also remember the Sirens, whose seductive songs lured foolish sailors to shipwreck and death.

  Not in this bank, I said.

  I met her in the car park, as arranged.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Alexander...”

  She was unsure of herself. Awkward. I’d never seen her like that.

  She wore a shirt, a cardigan, long skirt, flat shoes: wholesome, well groomed.

  I explained that she should come into the bank with me and listen to the difficulties that had arisen in finding the brewery’s millions.

  For someone whose main fears for ten years or more had been that I would somehow manage to rob her, she seemed less than anxious about the success of the search.

  “I promise you,” I said, “they are trying everything they know to find your money.”

  “My father’s money,” she said. “Everything you have done was for him, wasn’t it?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “You would never have done it for me.”

  I said, “His whole life was the brewery. He built it up. It was his pride. The heartless betrayal of Norman Quorn devastated him, and yes, I believe it killed him. And for his sake and for my mother’s sake I would have done anything to put things right. I’ve tried. I haven’t managed it. I want the bank people to tell you that I am not trying to steal from you. I am trying to restore what Ivan built.”

  “Alexander . . .”

  “I did believe on Saturday,” I said, “that you were sincerely offering a truce. I hope you didn’t know exactly what you were beckoning me into. I know you tried to stop that little lark with the barbecue ... I could hear you. I know you got me help. Anyway,” I finished, running out of impetus, “will you come into the bank?”

  She nodded speechlessly and went with me into the conference room, where of course her looks and natural charm immediately enslaved the bank man, who hadn’t encountered her before. He fussed over a chair for her and offered her coffee, and she smiled at him sweetly, as she could.

  We all sat down round the table. The bank man obligingly outlined all the measures so far taken to keep the brewery alive, and he explained that they were trying to find the missing millions by using the list.

  “That list,” she murmured. “What’s on that list?”

  “Don’t let her see it,” Tobe said abruptly.

  The bank man asked, “Why ever not?”

  “Because of what it cost to bring it here. Al may sit at this table with us hour after hour pretending there’s nothing the matter, but he’s halfway to fainting most of the time . . .”

  “No,” I objected.

  “Yeah, yeah.” He waved his toothpick in my direction. “It was Oliver Grantchester, I’ll bet you, who got Patsy to offer you a truce and to inveigle you into that garden. He may be in the lockup at this moment, but he’ll get out sometime, and he may know a way of using this list that we haven’t fathomed, and he may have told her what to look for, so don’t let her see it.”

  There was an intense silence.

  Patsy slowly stood up.

  “Oliver used me,” she said. “You are right. It’s not easy to admit it.” She swallowed. “I didn’t know anything about any list before Oliver tried to make Alexander give it to him. Don’t show it to me, I don’t want to see it.” She looked directly at me, and said, “I’m sorry.”

  I stood up also. She gave me a long look, and a nod, and went away.

  At the end of an afternoon that produced nothing but baffling frustration I drove to Chesham Place and told my uncle, over a tumblerful of single malt, that three clever financial brains had spent two whole working days trying to make sense of Norman Quorn’s list of bank accounts, and failing.

  “They’ll succeed tomorrow,” he said encouragingly.

  I shook my head. “They’ve given up. They’ve got other things they have to do.”

  “You’ve done your best, Al.”

  I was sitting forwards, forearms on knees, holding my glass with both hands, trying not to sound as spent as I felt. I told him about Patsy’s visit to the bank and about her understanding of Oliver Grantchester’s intention of robbing the brewery. “But between them,” I said, “he and Norman Quorn have fumbled the ball. The millions are lost. I’m glad Ivan didn’t know.”

  After a while Himself asked, “What were you doing in hospital? Patsy wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Sleeping, mostly.”

  “Al!”

  “Well ... it was Grantchester who sent the thugs to the bothy, thinking you’d given me the King Alfred Gold Cup to look after. He didn’t tell them exactly what they were looking for; I suppose because he was afraid they would steal it for themselves if they knew how valuable it was. Anyway, when he found out I had that damned list, that has proved useless, he got the same thugs to persuade me to hand it over, but I still didn’t like them—or him—so I didn’t.”

  He looked aghast.

  “Some of my ribs are cracked. Grantchester’s in a police hospital ward. Patsy and I may come to that truce in the end. You’re making me drunk.”

  My mother and I ate an Edna-cooked dinner and afterwards played Scrabble.

  My mother won.

  I took a pill at bedtime and stayed asleep for hours, and was astounded to meet Keith Robbiston on the stairs when I dawdled on my way down to breakfast.

  “Come in here,” he said, pointing me into Ivan’s lifeless study. “Your uncle and your mother are both worried about you.”

  I said, “Why?”

  “Your mother said she beat you at Scrabble and your uncle says you’re not telling him the whole truth.” He studied my face, from which the swelling and bruises had largely faded, but which did, as I had to acknowledge, show gray fatigue and strain. “You didn’t tell either of them about any burns.”

  “They worry too much.”

  “So where are these burns?”

  I took off my shirt, and he unwound the bandages. His silence, I thought, was ominous.

  “They told me,” I said, “that there wasn’t any sign of infection, and that I would heal OK.”

  “Well, yes.”

  He got from me the name of the hospital and on Ivan’s phone traced the grandmotherly doctor. He listened to her for quite a long time, staring at me throughout, his gaze slowly intensifying and darkening. “Thank you,” he said eventually. “Thank you very much.”

  “Don’t tell my mother,” I begged him. “It’s too soon after Ivan.”

  “All right.”

  He said he would not disturb the synthetic skin dressings, and rewrapped the damage from armpits to waist.

  “They gave you several injections of morphine in the hospital,” he said. “And those pills I’ve given you ... they too contain morphine.”

  “I thought they were pretty strong.”

  “You’ll get addicted, Al. And I’m not being funny.”

  “I’ll deal with that later.”

  He gave me enough pills for four extra days. I thanked him, and meant it.

  “Don’t take more than you can help. And driving a car,” he observed, “is only making things worse.”

  I phoned Tobe’s office and didn’t get him. He had gone away for the weekend.

  “But it’s only Thursday,” I protested.

  He would probably be back on Monday.

  God damn him, I thought.

  Margaret was “unavailable.”

  The big bank cheese had left me a message. “All the King Alfred Gold Cup race expenses will be honored by the bank, working closely with Mrs. Benchmark, who is now organizing everything for the day at Cheltenham.”

  Bully for Patsy. Big cheeses were putty in her hands.

  I drifted through a quiet morning and companionable lunch with my mother and in the afternoon drove to Lambourn, a
rriving in the hour of maximum bustle; evening stables.

  Emily, in her natural element, walked confidently around her yard in her usual fawn cavalry-twill trousers, neat and businesslike, instructing the lads, feeling horses’ legs, patting necks and rumps, offering treats of carrots, delivering messages of positive love to the powerful shining creatures that rubbed their noses against her in response.

  I watched her for some time before she realized I was there, and I vividly understood again how comprehensively she belonged in that life, and how essential it was to her mind’s well-being.

  While I was still sitting in Ivan’s car a horse box drove into the yard and unloaded Golden Malt.

  He came out forwards, muscles quivering, hooves placed delicately on the ramp as he sought for sure footing, the whole process jerky and precarious: and, once out, he moved with liquid perfection, his feet on springs, his chestnut coat like fire in the evening sun, the arrogance of great thoroughbreds in every toss of his head.

  Impossible not to be moved. He had twice let me lead him into misty unknown distances, taking me on faith. Looking at his splendid homecoming, I didn’t know how I’d dared

  I stood up out of the car. Emily, seeing me, came to stand beside me, and together we watched the horse being led a few times round the yard to loosen his leg muscles after the confines of his journey.

  “He looks great,” I said.

  Emily nodded. “The short change of scene suited him.”

  “And Saturday?”

  “He won’t disgrace himself.” Her words were judicious, but trembled with the hard-to-control excitement of any trainer who felt there was a chance of winning a big race.

  We went into the house, where it proved impossible for her to do anything as ordinary as cooking dinner. I hadn’t the energy either.

  We ate bread and cheese.

  At ten o’clock she went out into her stable yard, as she was accustomed, to check that all her charges were happily settled for the night. I followed her and stood irresolutely in the yard looking up at the stars and the rising moon.

  “Em,” I said, as she came towards me, “will you lend me a horse?”

  “What horse?” she asked, puzzled.

  “Any. ”

  “But ... what for?”

  “I want ...” How could I explain it? “I want to go up onto the Downs ... to be alone.”

  “Now?”

  I nodded.

  “Even for you,” she said, “you’ve been very silent this evening.”

  “Things need thinking out,” I said.

  “And it’s a matter of the hundred and twenty-first Psalm?”

  “What?”

  “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,” she said, “from whence cometh my help.”

  “Em.”

  “And the Downs will have to do, instead of your mountains.”

  Her understanding took my voice away entirely. Without questions, without arguing, she went across to the tack room and reappeared with a saddle and bridle. Then she crossed to one of the boxes in the yard and switched on its internal light.

  I went over there.

  “This is one of Ivan’s other horses. He’s not much good, but he’s a friendly old fellow. I suppose he’s mine now ... and as you’re Ivan’s executor ... you’ve every right to ride him ... but don’t let him get loose if you can help it.”

  “No.”

  She saddled the horse expertly, pulling the girth tight.

  “Wait,” she said, and made a fast detour back to the house, returning with the blue crash helmet and a padded jacket. Looking at my cotton shirt, she said, “It’ll be cold up there.”

  She held the jacket for me to put on. Even though she was careful, it hurt.

  “Oliver Grantchester can burn in hell,” she said.

  “Em ... How do you know?”

  “Margaret Morden phoned me today to ask how you were feeling. She told me. She thought I knew.”

  She bridled up the horse and unemotionally gave me a leg up onto his back. She offered me the helmet, but made no fuss when I shook my head. She knew I preferred free air, and I was not going out to gallop.

  “Thanks, Em,” I said.

  She understood that it was a comprehensive sort of gratitude.

  “Get going,” she said.

  King Alfred, I thought, had perhaps sat on a horse at the exact place where I’d reined to a halt after a slow walk uphill from Lambourn.

  I was on one of the highest points on the Downs, looking east to the valleys where the uplands slid away towards the Thames, which hadn’t been a grand water-way in Alfred’s lifetime, more a long winding drainage system from the Cotswold Hills to the North Sea.

  King Alfred had been a scholar, a negotiator, a poet, a warrior, a strategist, a historian, an educator, a law-giver. I wished a fraction of him could be inhaled to give me wisdom, but he had ridden this land eleven hundred and more years ago, when villainy wore its selfsame face but nothing much else was familiar.

  It was odd to reflect that it was, of all things, ale that was least changed. The brewery named for the king still flowed with the drink that had sustained and comforted his people.

  Ivan’s horse walked onwards, plodding slowly, going nowhere under my aimless direction.

  The clear sky and weak moonlight were millions of years old. Chill threads of the earth’s wind moved in my hair. The perspective of time could cool any fever if one gave it a chance.

  One could learn, perhaps, that failure was bearable: make peace with the certainty that all wasn’t enough.

  I came to the long-fallen tree trunk that many trainers on the Downs made use of to give young horses an introduction to jumping. I slid off Ivan’s horse to let him rest and sat on the log, holding the reins loosely while the horse bent his head unexcitedly to graze. His presence was in its own way a balm, an undemanding kinship with the natural ancient world.

  I had caused in myself more pain than I really knew how to deal with, and the fact that it had been for nothing had to be faced.

  It was five days now since I’d been dragged into Grantchester’s garden. Five days since the thug called Jazzo, with his boxing gloves and his well-trained technique, had cracked my ribs and hit me with such force that I flinched from the memory as sorely as I still ached in places. I hadn’t been able to dodge or in any way defend myself, and the helplessness had only added to the burden.

  I could call him a bastard.

  Bastard.

  It didn’t make anything better. Cracked ribs were like daggers stabbing at every movement. Much better not to cough.

  As for the grill ...

  I looked out over the quiet age of the Downs.

  Even with the pills, I was spending too long on the absolute edge of normal behavior. I didn’t want to retreat to a drugged inertia while my skin grew back, but it was an option with terrible temptations. I wanted not oblivion but fortitude. More fortitude than I found easy.

  The horse scrunched and munched, the bit clinking.

  What I had done had been irrational.

  I should have told Grantchester where to find the list.

  There was no saying, of course, that even if I’d told him the minute I’d set foot in his garden, he would have let me walk out of there untouched. I had seen the sickening enjoyment in his face ... I’d heard from Bernie’s confession to the police that Grantchester had burned Norman Quorn even though the frantic Finance Director would have told him anything to escape the fire. Grantchester’s pleasure in prolonging Quorn’s agony had directly led to Quorn’s sudden death ... from heart failure, from stroke or from shock; one or another. Grantchester’s pleasure had in itself denied him the knowledge he sought. The only bright outcome of the whole mess.

  Poor Norman Quorn, nonviolent embezzler, had been sixty-five and frightened.

  I’d been twenty-nine ... and frightened ... and irrational ... and I’d been let off in time not to die.

  I’d been let off with multiple bars of
first, second and third degree bums that would heal.

  I’d been let off in time to know that burning had been a gesture for nothing, because whatever information Norman Quorn had entrusted to his sister in that benighted envelope, it hadn’t turned out to be an indication of what he’d done with the brewery’s money.

  I could admit to myself that I’d burned from pride.

  Harder to accept that it had been pointless.

  Essential to accept that it had been pointless, and to go on from there.

  I stood up stiffly and walked for a while, leading the horse.

  If I’d been in Scotland I would have gone up into the mountains and let the wild pipes skirl out the raw sorrow, as they always had in turbulent history. Yet ... would a lament be enough? A pibroch would cry for the wounded man ... but I needed more—I needed something tougher. Something to tell me, Well OK, too bad, don’t whine, you did it to yourself. Get out the paints.

  When I went back to the mountains, I would play a march.

  I rode for a while and walked by turns through the consoling night, and when the first gray seeped into the dark sky I turned the horse westwards and let him amble that way until we came to landmarks we both recognized as the right way home.

  chapter 15

  Friday morning, Lambourn, Emily’s house. I telephoned Margaret Morden.

  No, she said, no one had thought of any new way of finding the money. The list, if it held the secret, had humbled them so far, but ...

  “It was a false hope,” I said. “Useless ... Forget it. Give it up.”

  “Don’t talk like that!”

  “It’s all right. Truly. Will you come to the races?”

  “If you want me ...”

  “Of course we want you. Without you, there would be no race.”

  “Without you.”

  “We’re brilliant,” I said, laughing, “but no one will give us our due.”

  “You do sound better.”

  “I promise you, I’m fine.”

  I was floating on a recent pill. Well, one had to, sometimes.

  Inspector Vernon telephoned. “Oliver Grantchester,” he said.

  “What about him?”