To the hilt

by Дик Фрэнсис

  '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 grey 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 re-wrapped 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 another four 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 honoured by the bank, working closely with Mrs Benchmark who is now organising 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, arriving 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 realised 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 horsebox drove into the yard and unloaded Golden Malt.

  He came out forwards, muscles quivering, hooves placed delicately on the ramp as he sought for secure footing, the whole process jerky and precarious: 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 a bridle. Then she crossed to one of the boxes in the yard and switched on its internal light.

  I joined her 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 on 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 of the Downs, looking east to the valleys where the uplands slid away towards the Thames, that hadn't been a grand waterway in Alfred's lifetime, more a long winding drainage system from the Cotswolds to the North Sea.

  King Alfred had been a scholar, a negotiator, a poet, a warrior, a strategist, a historian, an educator, a lawgiver. I wished a fraction of him could be inhaled to give m
e 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 behaviour. 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, non-violent 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 burns, 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 grey seeped into the dark sky I turned the horse westwards and let him amble that way until we came to landmarks we both recognised as the right way home.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  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?'

  'Someone viciously assaulted him last Saturday, in his garage… as you know.'

  'The poor fellow.'

  'Was it your girlfriend who kicked hell out of him?'

  'Inspector,' I said reasonably, 'I was lying in that pond. How could I know?'

  'She might have told you who did it.'

  'No, she didn't - and, anyway, I don't repeat what I'm told.'

  After a moment he said, 'Fair enough.'

  I smiled. He could hear it in my voice. 'I do hope,' I said, 'that poor Mr Grantchester is still in a bad way.'

  'I can tell you, off the record,' he said austerely, 'that the testicular damage inflicted on Mr Grantchester was of a severity that involved irreparable rupture and… er… surgical removal.'

  'What a shame,' I said happily.

  'Mr Kinloch!'

  'My friend has gone abroad, and she won't be back,' I said. 'Don't bother looking. She wouldn't have attacked anyone, I'm sure.'

  Vernon didn't sound convinced, but apart from no witnesses, it seemed he had no factual clues. The unknown assailant seemed to be getting away with it.

  'How awful,' I said.

  I supposed that, when Chris found out, the gelding of Oliver Grantchester would cost me extra. Money well spent.

  I said to Vernon, 'Give Grantchester my best regards for a falsetto future.'

  That's heartless.'

  'You don't say.'

  I slept on the pill for three or four hours. Out in the yard life bustled along in the same old way, and by lunchtime I found myself falling into the same old role of general dogsbody, 'popping' down to the village for such-and-such, ferrying blood samples to the vet's office, collecting tack from repair.

  Emily and I ate dinner together and went to bed together, and even though this time I easily raised the necessary enthusiasm, she lay in my arms afterwards and told me it broke her heart.

  'What does?' I asked.

  'Seeing you try to be a husband.'

  'But I am…'

  'No.' She kissed my shoulder above the bandages. 'You know you don't belong here. Just come back sometimes. That'll do.'

  Patsy had organised the race day. Patsy had consulted with the tent-erectors and caterers who were out to please. At Patsy's command, the hundred or so commercial guests - creditors, suppliers, landlords of tied houses - were given a big welcome, unlimited drinks, free racecards, tickets to every enclosure, press-release photographs, lunch, tea.

  Cheltenham's racecourse, always forward-looking, had extended to King Alfred's brewery, in Ivan's memory, every red-carpet courtesy they could give to the chief sponsor of one of their top crowd-pulling early-season afternoons. Patsy had the whole racecourse executive committee tumbling over themselves to please her. Patsy's social gifts wer
e priceless.

  To Patsy had been allocated the Sponsors' Box in the grandstand, next best thing to the plushed-up suite designed for crowned heads and other princes.

  Patsy had organised, in the Sponsors' Box, a private family lunch for my mother, her stepmother, so that Ivan's widow could be both present and apart.

  Having met my mother at the Club entrance, I walked with her to the Sponsors' Box. Patsy faultlessly welcomed her with kisses. Patsy was dressed in dark grey, in mourning for her father but with a bright Hermes silk scarf round her neck. She looked grave, businesslike, and in full control of the day.

  Behind her stood Surtees, who would not meet my eyes. Surtees shifted from foot to foot, gave my mother a desultory peck on the cheek, and altogether behaved as if he wished he weren't there.

  'Hello, Surtees,' I said, to be annoying.

  He gave me a silent, frustrated look, and took two paces backwards. What a grand change, I thought, from days gone by.

  Patsy gave us both a puzzled look, and at one point later in the afternoon said, 'What have you said to Surtees? He won't talk about you at all. If I mention you he finds some reason for leaving the room, I don't understand it.'

  'Surtees and I,' I said, 'have come to an understanding. He keeps his mouth shut, and so do I.'

  'What about?'

  'On my side about his behaviour in Oliver Grantchester's garden.'

  'He didn't really mean what he said.'

  I clearly remembered Surtees urging Jazzo to hit me harder, when Jazzo was already hitting me as hard as he could. Surtees had meant it, all right: his revenge for my making him look foolish in Emily's yard.

  I said, 'For quite a while I believed it was Surtees who sent those thugs to my house in Scotland, to find the King Alfred Gold Cup.'

  It shook her. 'But why?'

  'Because he said, "Next tune you'll scream".'

  Her eyes darkened. She said slowly, 'He was wrong about that.'

  I shrugged. 'You were telling everyone that I'd stolen the Cup. Surtees, of course, believed it.'

  'You wouldn't steal.'

  I listened to the certainty in her voice, and asked, trying to suppress bitterness, 'How long have you known that?'