To the hilt

by Дик Фрэнсис

  In the age of cars, the Ridgeway path beckoned walkers, and to lone horse-thieves it was a broad highway.

  When I reached it I almost missed it: trotted straight across and only belatedly realised that I'd been expecting more of a production than a simple rutted track. Indeed, I retraced my steps and stopped Golden Malt for a rest while I looked around for helpful signposts, and found none. I was on high ground. The track ran from east to west, according to the wind. It was definitely a path. It had to be the right one.

  Shrugging, I committed the enterprise and turned left, to the west, and trotted hopefully on. All paths, after all, led somewhere, even if not to Stonehenge.

  I had chosen a longer route than essential in order to avoid roads, and it was true that the Ridgeway didn't represent the straightest line from A to B, but as I didn't want to get lost and have to ask the way and draw attention to myself, I considered the extra time and miles well spent.

  The path turned south-west at roughly where I expected and led across a minor road or two and, to my relief, proving to be the real thing, delivered me to Foxhill.

  Emily's friend took my quiet arrival for granted.

  'Mrs Cox,' I said, 'says she will call by in a day or two to pick up the saddle and bridle.'

  Tine.'

  'I'll be off, then.'

  'Right. Thanks. We'll look after the old boy.' She patted the chestnut neck with maternal and expert fondness, and nodded to me cheerfully as I left, not querying my assertion of thumbing a lift back to Lambourn.

  I thumbed a lift to Swindon instead, however, and caught a train to Reading, and called on a powerful area bank manager who wasn't expecting a padded jacket, jodhpur boots and a shiny blue riding helmet with jockeys' goggles.

  'Er…' he said.

  'Yes. Well, I'm sorry about the presentation but I'm acting for my stepfather, Sir Ivan Westering, and this is not my normal world.'

  'I know Sir Ivan well,' he said. 'I'm sorry he's ill.'

  I handed him a certified copy of the power of attorney and Ivan's Alternate Director letter which, although much creased by now through having been folded into my shirt pocket for the cross-country expedition, worked its customary suspension of prompt ejection, and, smooth man that he was, he listened courteously to my plea for the workers at the brewery to receive their wages as usual for this present week, and for the pensioners to be paid also, while the insolvency practitioner, Mrs Morden, tried to put together a committee of creditors for a voluntary arrangement.

  He nodded. 'I've already been approached by Mrs Morden.' He paused thoughtfully, then said, 'I've also talked to Tobias Tollright. He told me you would come here on your knees.'

  'I'll kneel if you like.'

  The faintest of smiles twitched in his eye muscles, and vanished. He said, 'What do you get out of this personally?'

  Surprised, I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything, a feeble absence of answer that seemed not to bother him.

  'Hmph.' He sniffed. He looked at his fingers. He said, 'All right. The wages cheques will be honoured for this week. We'll allow the pensioners seventy-five per cent. Then we'll see.' He stood up, holding out a smooth white hand. 'A revelation doing business with you, Mr Kinloch.'

  I shook his hand and breathed deeply with relief on the way out.

  With an hour and a half to spare before the intimidating prospect of my appointment with Mrs Margaret Morden, fairy godmother to near-bankrupt Cinderellas, I bought more throwaway razors, a small tube of shaving cream and another comb - the Euston collection being still in London - and in a pub tried to put a tidier face on things. Nothing but time, though, would unblack the eye. I drank half a pint of King Alfred Gold to get reacquainted with what I was trying to save and turned up promptly on the lady's threshold.

  A word or two had gone ahead of me, I gathered, as she knew at once who I was and welcomed me without blinking. The power of attorney was yet again carefully inspected, a certified copy accepted and ready to be filed away, and a copy of Ivan's letter taken, as had been done also at Tollright's firm, and the bank. Mrs Morden gave me back Ivan's open-sesames and requested me, in my turn, to sign an authorisation for her to act for the brewery. This was not handshake-gentleman's-agreement-land, this was paper-trail responsibility.

  Mrs Margaret Morden looked somewhere in the ageless forties, and was not the severe businesswoman I'd expected. True, her manner was based on self-confidence, and formidable intelligence shone in steady grey eyes, but she was dressed not in a suit but in a soft calf-length dress of pink and violet printed silk, with a ruffle round the neck.

  Involuntarily I smiled, and from her satisfied change of expression realised that that was exactly the aim of her clothes; to encourage, to soften prejudice, to mediate, to persuade.

  Her office was spacious, a cross between functional grey and leather-bound law books, with a desk-like shelf the whole length of one wall, bearing six or seven computer monitors, all showing different information. A chair on castors stood ready before them waiting, it seemed, to roll her from screen to screen.

  She sat down in a large black chair behind a separate executive-sized desk and waved me to the clients' (slightly smaller) chair facing. There were brewery papers already spread out on the desk: she and Tobias between them had obviously wasted no tune.

  She said, 'We have here a serious situation…'

  The serious situation was abruptly made worse by the door crashing open to admit a purposeful missile of a man, with a flustered secretary behind him bleating (as in a thousand film scripts), 'I'm very sorry, Mrs Morden, I couldn't stop him.'

  The intruder, striding into centre-stage, pointed a sharp finger at my face and said, 'You've no right to be here. Out.' He jerked the finger towards the door. 'Any negotiations needed by the King Alfred Brewery will be performed by me.'

  He was quivering with rage, a thin fiftyish man going extensively bald and staring fiercely through large glasses with silvery metal rims. He had a scrawny neck, a sharp Adam's apple and megawatt mental energy. He told me again to leave.

  Mrs Morden asked calmly, 'And you are…?'

  'Madam,' he said furiously, 'in the absence of Sir Ivan Westering I am in charge of the brewery. I am the acting managing director. This wretched young man hasn't the slightest authority to go round interviewing our auditor and our bank manager, as I hear he's been doing. You will disregard him and get rid of him, and I will decide whether or not we need your services at all, which I doubt.'

  Mrs Morden asked non-committally, '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 by-passed Desmond Finch in giving me his trust, and I wondered why. It would have been normal for him to have passed 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. Sh
e 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 at 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 neutralising 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 Desmond Finch's visit to Margaret Morden, 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 programme 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 grey, 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 authorisations, 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 Quorn 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 a 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 realisation 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 prodd
ing 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 storyteller 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.