by Francis - TO THE HILT

'That picture keeps me going,' he said.

I drove back to London, having briefly checked on Golden Malt in his isolated splendour, Jimmy Jennings's daughter tending him with years of experience showing.

The horsebox driver had already unloaded and gone, as agreed with his firm. The hiding of Ivan's horse should, barring accidents, be complete.

I left Ivan's car in its underground lair and returned to his house to learn that Patsy had spent the afternoon with him, complaining that I had attacked Surtees so murderously as to leave him concussed, that I had committed child abuse against Xenia, and had brazenly stolen Golden Malt for my own illegal ends, such as holding him for ransom.

'I listened to her,' Ivan said judiciously. 'Is my horse safe?'

'Yes.'

'And a ransom?'

I said tiredly, 'Don't be silly.'

He actually laughed. 'I listened to her, and she's my daughter, but when she went on and on about how devious and dishonest you are, I slowly realised that I've truly been trusting you all along, that my inner instinct has held firm, even though to you I may sometimes have shown indecision. I love my daughter, but I think she's wrong. I said once impulsively that I wished you were my son. I didn't think I meant it when I said it. I do mean it now.'

My mother embraced him with uncharacteristic delight and he stroked her arm happily, content to have pleased her. I saw in them both the youthful faces they had left behind, and thought I might paint that perception, one day soon.

There was time after that for the three of us to eat dinner calmly before I left for the night train. We drank wine in friendship, Ivan and I, and had come nearer than ever before to an appreciative and lasting understanding. I did believe, against all previous experience, that Patsy could not henceforth sow overthrowing doubts of me in his decent mind.

He insisted on returning to my care the unopened envelope containing the codicil to his Will.

'Don't argue, Alexander,' he said. 'It will be safest with you.'

'We won't need it for years. By then it will be out of date.'

'Yes. Perhaps. Anyway, I've decided to tell you what's in it.'

'You don't have to.'

'I need to,' he said, and told me.

I smiled and hugged him for the first time ever.

I hugged my mother, and went to Scotland.

To my surprise Jed was waiting at Dalwhinnie in the dawn. Himself had telephoned my mother late the previous evening, he said, and she'd told him I was on the train. Himself wanted me to go directly from train to castle, a command automatically to be obeyed.

On the way Jed told me that I now had a new bed and a new armchair in the bothy (chosen by Jed, paid for by Himself) and I was to write a list of other things I would need. My uncle would foot the bill unconditionally.

'But he doesn't have to,' I protested.

'If you ask me, he feels guilty. Let him atone.'

I glanced at Jed sideways. 'A shrink, are you?' I asked.

'He told me you wouldn't think, let alone suggest, that he ought to make good your losses. I explained that you'd cleared out the bothy and he had me get that pile of muck removed. I hope to God the hilt wasn't hidden in it.'

'Your prayers are answered. Where's the painting, the one in the sheet?'

'In my house, with all the other things you gave me.'

I sighed with relief.

'Flora looked at it,' he said. 'She says it's the portrait of a ghost.'

Flora, his wife, had 'the sight', the ability deep in the Scottish gene-pool of being able sometimes to see the future.

'The word ghost means spirit,' I said. 'If Flora sees a spirit, that's what I painted.'

'You make it sound so prosaic.'

'It isn't finished,' I said.

'No. Flora said not.' He paused. 'She said she saw that ghost weeping.'

' Weeping ?'

'She said so.' He sounded apologetic. 'You know how she gets, sometimes.'

I nodded.

Weeping and Dr Zoл Lang weren't concepts that sat easily together, and I had no intention of trying to paint regret, but only a statement that while the outer shell aged, the inner spirit might not. The task was hard enough already. Weeping for lost youth would have to be a sequel.

As before I found Himself in his dining-room eating toast. He raised his big head at my entrance and gave me his formal greeting.

'Alexander.'

'My lord.'

'Breakfast?' He waved a hand.

'Thank you.'

There were three places laid that morning, one used. James, I learned, had already gone out on the moors.

'He wants a round of golf,' Himself said. 'How about this afternoon? He's leaving tomorrow. I've asked Jed to fix you up with wheels, and also with a portable telephone of your own, and don't object that you can't recharge the batteries, Jed is getting you extra ones and he'll call on you every day with replacements. It may not be to your liking for solitude, but please humour me in this.'

He looked at my silent face and smiled. 'You would no doubt die for me as your clan chief. You can suffer a portable telephone.'

'Put like that…'

'You can go back to your damned paints tomorrow.'

Resignedly, I ate toast. The old feudal obligations might be thought to be extinct, but in fact were not. The freedom of the wild mountains that I so prized was my uncle's gift. I owed him an allegiance both decreed by my ancestry and reinforced by present favours and, besides, I liked him very much.

He wanted to know what I'd been doing in the south, and he kept prodding me for details. I told him fairly fully about the codicil, about Patsy's chatty involvement with Oliver Grantchester, about the discovery of Norman Quorn's body, and about my fracas with Surtees in Emily's yard.

'Two things emerge from all that,' he said eventually. 'Surtees is a dangerous fool, and where is the brewery's money?'

'The brewery's auditor can't find it.'

'No,' he said thoughtfully, 'but can you ?

'I?' I no doubt sounded as surprised as I felt. 'If the accountant and the insolvency lady say finding it is impossible, how can I, who know next to nothing about international transfers, how can I even know where to begin?'

'It will come to you,' he said.

'But I don't have access…'

'What to?' he said, when I stopped.

'Well… to whatever is left of Norman Quorn's office in the brewery.'

He wrinkled his forehead. 'Would there be anything still there?'

'If the dragons didn't guard the gates, I'd take a look.'

'Dragons?'

'Patsy, and the brewery's manager, Desmond Finch.'

'You would think they would want the money found.'

'But not by me.'

'That woman,' he said, meaning Patsy, 'is a menace.'

I told him of the friendly evening I'd spent with Ivan, and he said that my stepfather seemed to have come to his silly senses at last.

'He's a good man,' I observed mildly. 'If your son James told you over and over again for years and years that I was trying to worm my way into your regard and your Will, would you believe him?'

Himself thought long and intensely. 'I might,' he at last acknowledged.

'Patsy is afraid of losing her father's love,' I said. 'Not just her inheritance.'

'She's in danger of bringing about what she fears.'

'People do,' I agreed.

The two of us made a complete circuit outside of the whole castle and its wings, as he liked to do, only to find on our return, outside the entrance door the family now used, a small white car that drew from him frowns and disgust.

'That bloody woman.'

'Who?'

'That Lang woman. She lives on my doorstep! Why did I ever ask her here?'

Himself might rue the day, but I was fascinated to see her again. She and her eighty-year-old wrinkles climbed out of the car and stood stalwartly in our path.