by Francis - TO THE HILT

Patsy and Surtees's stud farm lay on the outskirts of a village south of Hungerford. I had never been there myself, but I felt I knew it well from Chris's reports.

I tried to phone Margaret Morden at her home, but there was no reply. I tried again in the morning, and reached her.

'It's Saturday,' she objected.

'It's always Saturday.'

'It had better be worth it.'

'How about some numbers and names that Norman Quorn gave to his sister?'

After a silent moment she said, 'Are you talking about routes and destinations?'

'I think so.'

'We can't do anything until Monday.'

Bugger weekends, I thought.

'I can't change my Monday meetings. It'll have to be Tuesday.'

'Tobias said he was going to Paris and wouldn't be back in his office until Tuesday.'

'On Monday morning,' Margaret said, 'I will liaise with Tobias's office for an appointment and I will rope in the big bank cheese. Say ten o'clock, Tuesday, at the bank? Will you bring the numbers?'

I agreed resignedly to what seemed to me an endless and endlessly dangerous delay. The weekend stretched ahead like a boring monochrome desert, so it was quite a relief when, early in the afternoon, Himself decided to give me a buzz.

'Where are you?' he said.

'Little Venice, looking at the narrow boats, and thinking about paddling.' Thinking about the mountains, thinking about paint. Ah well.

'I have been talking to Patsy,' my uncle said.

'Who phoned who?' I asked.

'She phoned me. What does it matter? She wanted to know if I knew where you were.'

'What did you say?'

'I said you could be anywhere. She sounded quite different, Al. She sounded as if she had suddenly woken up. I told her that you had been working for her all along, at the brewery, and that she had misjudged you, and you had never tried to cause trouble between her and her father, very much the opposite, and that she had been grossly unfair to you all these years.'

'What did she say?'

'She said she wanted to talk to you. Al, do talk to her, at least it's a beginning.'

'Do you mean,' I said, 'talk to her on the phone?'

'It would be a start. She said she would be at home all afternoon. Do you have her number?' He read it out to me.

'I can't believe this,' I said.

'Give her a chance,' my uncle pleaded. 'It can't do any harm just to talk to her.'

I said, 'Any olive branch is worth the grasping.' And, ten minutes later, I was talking to her.

She sounded, as Himself had said, quite different. She apologised . She said that my uncle had given her a proper ticking-off for never seeing that I was no threat to her, and she was willing, if I were, to try and sort things out between us. She asked if I would let bygones be bygones, and perhaps we could come to an understanding for the future.

'What sort of understanding?' I asked.

'Well,' she said, 'just that we don't fight all the time.'

I agreed to a truce.

Would I, she suggested diffidently, would I come for a drink?

'Where?' I asked.

'Well… here?'

'Where is here?'

'At home,' she said. She mentioned the name of the village.

'Do you really mean it?' I asked.

'Oh, Alexander, your uncle has made me see how prejudiced I have been about you. I just want to start to put things right.'

I told her I would turn up for a drink at about six thirty and then, disconnecting, I phoned Chris's pager. He called back.

I said, 'Are you outside Surtees's house?'

'You betya.'

'Is anything happening?'

'Bugger all.'

'I have been invited for a drink.'

'Belladonna? Aconite? Gin and toadstools?'

I sighed. 'But if she is genuine…'

'She is never genuine, you said.'

I was truly undecided. 'I think I'll go for the drink,' I said.

'Bad choice.'

'I'll take you with me. Have you got the "secretary" handy?'

'In the car, zipped bag number five.'

I laughed. 'What are in numbers one, two, three and four?'

"The skinhead. Various Mr Youngs, various Mr Uttleys.'

'And at present?'

'I'm in a jogging suit, in a rented car, reading a map.'

'I'll pick up the "secretary" in the road at half past six.'

'Fair enough.'

I spent a couple of hours wondering if it were possible that Patsy had undergone a sea-change. I had either to believe it or not believe it. I had either to try for peace or fear a trap.

I would go, I thought, and take Chris with me. Peace treaties had to start somewhere, after all. So, in the late afternoon, I followed the map and arrived in Patsy's village at dusk and came across a long black-legged figure thumbing a lift.

I stopped beside him and he oozed into the car, wafting billows of expensive scent and doubling up with chuckles.

'Is anything happening?' I asked.

'Half an hour ago Surtees and his missus came out of the house, got into the car, and drove down the road, and I followed them in my car and I was just about to phone you when they turned into the gates of a house about half a mile away from here. They have got fairy lights all around the garden in the trees there, and several cars outside, and it looks as if it's some sort of party. So what do you want to do, try the house where Surtees lives, or join the party?'

'The house,' I said.

I walked from the road to the front door with Chris a step behind me and rang the bell. A young woman opened it. Beside her stood Xenia, unforgiving as always, with, behind, two younger children.

'Mrs Benchmark is expecting you,' the young woman said when I introduced myself. 'She says that she is very sorry but, when she was talking to you earlier, she forgot that she and Mr Benchmark were going to a drinks party. It's through the village, past the pub, along on the right-hand side, and you can't miss it. It is all decorated with lights. Mrs Benchmark asked me just to phone when you got here, so that she can meet you when you arrive at the party.'

I thanked her, and Chris and I walked back to the car.

'What do you think?' I asked.

'A toss-up.'

I tossed up mentally, heads you win, tails you lose, and lost.

Chris and I drove along past the pub and came to the house with the lights. When we reached the driveway, which was full of cars, we parked in the roadway. As we climbed out, Chris stumbled and broke the heel off one of his high-heeled patents. He swore, stopped, and said he would break off the other one to level himself up. I laughed, and set off towards the house a few steps ahead of him.

It was as if the bushes themselves erupted.

One moment I was walking unsuspectingly along, and the next I was being enmeshed in nets and ropes and being overwhelmed and pushed and dragged, not into the looming shadowy house but through some sort of rustic gate from the drive into a garden.

The garden, I was hazily aware, was lit by more festoons of fairy lights and by big multicoloured bulbs installed against many trees which, shining upwards, made canopies of illuminated branches and leaves; it was all strikingly theatrical, dramatically magnificent, a brilliant setting for a party.

No party that I'd been to before had started with one of the guests being tied to the trunk of a maple tree next to a bunch of red light bulbs that shone upwards into autumn-red leaves, creating a scarlet canopy above his head. My back was against the tree. There was rope round my ankles, and round my wrists, drawing them backwards, and - worst - round my neck.

At no party that I'd attended before had there been four familiar thugs as guests, one of them busy putting on boxing gloves.

Red leather boxing gloves.

The only other guests were Patsy and Surtees and Oliver Grantchester.

Surtees looked triumphant, Grantchester serious and Patsy astounded.