by Francis - TO THE HILT

She'd married Surtees two years after her father had married my mother, and in the weak, good-looking Hooray-Henry had chosen a mate she could indoctrinate.

I looked at Surtees as he stood behind Ivan's chair; he was a person, I thought, who would always seek such a shield, who would never have the steel to stand out in the open and say; 'Here I am. Judge me as I am.' Patsy had married a man she could bully and it had been very bad for both of them.

I found it less easy to understand Desmond Finch. He stood there glaring at me, thin, aggressive, flashing his large silver-rimmed glasses in sharp little head movements, his Adam's apple actively jumping in his neck. I had no reason to doubt the general assessment I'd been given that he was efficient and energetic in his job, but I believed also in the evaluation that he would act only if given directions. It seemed plain that he danced to Patsy's instructions: plain also that he'd made no objective overview on the brewery's troubles, in spite of his own whole career being bound up in its financial health.

A limited man, I thought. Short-sighted mentally as well as optically. A voice baying in the pack. Not one to sink the teeth in first.

And Oliver Grantchester? He'd never liked me; I'd never liked him.

There he balefully stood, bulky, going bald, Ivan's legal adviser from way-back, consulted, wise - and enchanted by Patsy to the extent that his manner to me was always of suspicion, distrust and obstruction.

Ivan said weakly, 'Couldn't you have got a better deal for the brewery, Alexander?'

I smiled grimly. 'I'm sick of the brewery,' I said. 'Ivan, let Patsy loose on the creditors. I don't give a damn about the fact that she'll ruin her inheritance. Why should I care? The brewery is yours. It's rescued; it has problems that are basically solved, but which you can muck up in a moment. I'm a painter and I'm going back to my own work, and goodbye… a heartfelt goodbye to you all.'

Ivan said miserably, 'Alexander…'

'For you,' I said to him plainly, 'I've taken risks that I'll take again, and I've begged and persuaded and bargained to save your good name. Because you sent me the chalice' - and I glanced at Patsy and Surtees, who stared as if transfixed - 'I got beaten beyond a joke. And I've had enough. I'll do anything on earth for my mother, but that's where it now ends. Do what you like, Ivan. Just count me out.'

My mother said, barely audibly, 'Oh no… please , Alexander,' and Ivan looked exhaustedly strained.

Grantchester said heavily, 'Ivan tells us he gave you his codicil for safe-keeping. He now sees that this was a mistake. So hand it over.'

Into the silence that followed I said, 'Ivan?'

His eyes looked deep in their sockets. I understood the impossibility he faced. His faith in me was a disloyalty to his daughter; a disloyalty I had no right to coerce, even if I could.

'I'll get it,' I said, letting him off. 'It's upstairs.'

I went up and fetched the sealed envelope, and returning, put it into his hands.

'I'll take it,' Grantchester said authoritatively, but Ivan put the envelope on his knees and folded his hands on it, and shook his head.

'I'll keep it here, Oliver,' he said.

'But-'

'Then I can tear it up if I change my mind.'

I smiled into Ivan's troubled eyes and without weight said I would be upstairs for an hour or two more if he wanted me.

'He doesn't want you,' Surtees said spitefully. 'None of us do.'

I shrugged and left them and, shaking my head to my mother's pleading eyes, went back upstairs, looking out of the window and waiting.

They went on shouting, downstairs, but finally the angry voices came out of Ivan's study and descended to street level and left by the front door. When all was quiet I went out of my room and onto the stairs, and found Ivan on the landing below me, looking up. He made a gesture towards his study, a flip of the hand that was unmistakably an invitation, so I went down and followed him into his room, and sat opposite him in my usual chair.

My mother, looking as frail as her husband, stood beside Ivan, touching him as if to give him strength.

He said to me, 'Did you mean it, that you've had enough?'

For answer I asked, 'Did you cancel the power of attorney?'

'I… I don't know what to do.'

'No, he didn't,' my mother said. 'Ivan, tell Alexander… Beg Alexander to go on acting for you.' To me she said, 'Don't leave us.'

I had so recently vowed I would do anything on earth for my mother. So small a thing, to stay and field a few insults. I wilted inside from disinclination.

'What did you mean about being beaten?' Ivan said.

'That black eye I had last week…'

He frowned. 'Keith Robbiston said you were hurt.'

I told them about the robbers. 'I didn't want to worry you when you were so ill… so I didn't tell you.'

'Oh my God,' he said, 'I've done so much harm.'

'Nothing that isn't being put right.'

I poured brandy into two glasses standing ready on a nearby silver tray and handed one to Ivan, one to my mother. They both drank without protest, as if I'd given them medicine.

I said to Ivan, 'If you just leave things as they are, the brewery should be out of debt in three years. I know some of the terms are hard. They have to be. The debts are truly enormous. Mrs Morden has done a marvellous job, but she says the future depends greatly on keeping the services of your present brewmaster and on the managing energies of Desmond Finch. Desmond Finch wouldn't take a diamond-studded suggestion from me, but he's used to following your instructions, so that's what you have to do, Ivan. Go back to the brewery and instruct him.'

My stepfather nodded with resolution. And how long, I morosely considered, would that resolution last?

The telephone rang. Ivan's hand asked me to answer it, so I did.

A confident voice said, 'This is Detective Constable Thompson of the Leicestershire police. I want to speak to Sir Ivan Westering.'

Ivan, of course, wanted me to deal with whatever it was. I explained that Sir Ivan was recovering from a heart attack, and offered my services.

'And you are, sir?'

'His son.' Well, near enough.

After a pause a different voice, just as confident, identified himself as Detective Chief Inspector Reynolds.

'What is this about?' I asked.

The voice enquired whether Sir Ivan knew anyone named Norman Quorn.

'Yes, he does.'

The voice impersonally explained. I listened blankly. The Leicestershire police had for two weeks been trying to identify a body that they now had reason to believe was that of a Mr Norman Quorn. The Chief Inspector wanted Sir Ivan Westering, as Mr Quorn's long-term employer, to assist in making a positive identification, yes or no.

With shortened breath, I said, 'Doesn't he have any relations?'

'Only his sister, sir, and she is… distressed . The body is partly decomposed. The sister gave us Sir Ivan's name. So we would be grateful, sir…'

'He isn't well,' I said.

'Perhaps you, then?'

'I didn't know him.' I thought briefly. 'I'll tell my father. Give me a number to phone you back.' He told me a number, which I wrote out of habit on the bottom of the box of tissues. 'Right,' I said, 'five minutes.'

As emotionlessly as possible I gave Ivan the news.

'Norman!' he said disbelievingly. 'Dead?'

'They want to know for sure. They ask you to go.'

'I'll go with you,' my mother said.

I phoned the Chief Inspector, told him I would be driving, and wrote his directions on the bottom of the tissue-box.

In the end four of us went to Leicestershire in Ivan's Rover (retrieved from an underground garage), Ivan and my mother in the back with Wilfred sitting in the front beside me, a box of heart-attack remedies on his lap. Wilfred read out the directions on the tissue-box so that fairly early in the afternoon we arrived at a featureless building in Leicester that housed a mortuary and investigating laboratories.