by Francis: TO THE HILT

'Call it quits,' I said, 'if you like.'

When Himself and his countess arrived to keep my mother company, I went down to find out how things were going in the hospitality tent, and found that the mood, in spite of the brewery's troubles, was up-beat, alcoholic and forgiving.

Margaret Morden greeted me with the sort of embrace that would have been over the top in any office but seemed appropriate to the abandon of a race day. Dressed in soft blue, with a reliable-looking husband by her side, she said she knew nothing about horses but would back Golden Malt.

She followed my gaze across the tent to where Patsy, flanked not by Surtees but by the perfect lieutenant, Desmond Finch, was encouraging everyone's future.

'You know,' I said to Margaret, 'Patsy will make a great success of running the brewery. She's a born manager. Better than her father. He was conscientious and a good man. She can bend and manipulate people to achieve her own ends… and I'd guess she'll lug the brewery out of the threat of bankruptcy faster than you can imagine.'

'How can you possibly forgive her?'

'I didn't say I forgave her. I said she would be a good manager.'

'It was in your voice.'

I smiled into the clever eyes. 'Find out for me,' I said, 'whether Oliver Grantchester suggested the embezzlement, or just stumbled across it and muscled in. Not that it really matters, I just wonder, that's all.'

'I can tell you now. It was Grantchester's idea all along. Then Norman Quorn did some fancy footwork to keep the loot himself, and misjudged the strength and cruelty of his partner.'

'How do you know?' I asked entranced.

'That weasel Desmond Finch told me. I leaned on him the tiniest bit. I said that as deputy managing director he should have spotted irregularities in the finance department, and he fell over himself to tell me that Norman Quorn had practically cried on his shoulder. I think - and to be honest I don't see how we can prove it unless Grantchester confesses, which I can't see him doing…'

'He's not the man he used to be,' I murmured.

'I think,' Margaret said, not hearing, or at least not understanding, 'that Norman Quom must have said in all good faith to Ivan's trusted friend and lawyer Oliver, how easy it would be in these days of electronic transfers to make oneself seriously rich. I think they worked it out together, maybe even as an academic exercise to begin with, and then, when the trial run succeeded, they did it in earnest, and then Quorn tried at the last minute to back out.'

'He did steal the money,' I said flatly. 'He tried to cut his partner out.'

She agreed bleakly. 'They both did.'

We drank champagne. Sweetish. Patsy was no spendthrift fool.

I sighed. 'I wish Tobe could have been here today,' I said.

Margaret hesitated. 'He couldn't bear that we hadn't been able to find the money with that list, when you suffered so much to bring it to us.'

'Tell him not to be so soft.'

She bent forward and unexpectedly kissed my cheek. 'Soft,' she said, 'is the last word I would apply to Alexander Kinloch.'

Himself and I, as two of the executors in whose name the horse was running, stood by the saddling boxes and watched Emily fasten the racing-size saddle onto Golden Malt.

Himself said to me conversationally, 'Word gets around, you know.'

'What word?'

'What Oliver Grantchester put you through in his garden.'

'Forget it.'

'If you say so. But it is rippling outward, and you can't stop it.'

(He was right to the extent that a short while later I got a postcard from young Andrew at his prep school. 'Is it true you were lying fully clothed in a goldfish pond one cold night in October?' - and I sent him back a single-word answer, 'Yes.')

Mad, weird Alexander. Who cared? Some have weirdness thrust upon them.

'Al,' Himself said, 'would you have burned for the Kinloch hilt?'

'It wasn't for the list,' I said.

He smiled. He knew. He was the one person who wholly understood.

We stood in the parade ring with Emily, watching Golden Malt stride round, led by his lad.

Emily's jockey joined us, dressed in Ivan's racing colours of gold, green checks, gold cap.

Emily was all business, no excitement obvious, a shortness of breath the only sign. She told the jockey to be handy in fourth place all the way, if he could, and make his move only after he'd rounded the last bend and straightened up for the uphill run to the winning post.

'Don't forget,' she said, 'that he won't accelerate on a curve. Wait, even though it hurts. He'll deliver if you do. He's a great fighter uphill.'

When the horses had gone out onto the track, Himself, Emily and I joined my mother up in the Sponsors' Box.

My mother, in the black clothes she had worn to Ivan's funeral, and the black sweeping hat with the white rose, gazed out over the autumnal racecourse and yearned for her lost consort, for the steadfast man of no great fire who had been all she needed as a companion.

It was Ivan's race. Ivan's day. Nothing would comfort her.

Patsy arrived, with Surtees. Patsy's manner to her husband was impatient: she was looking at him with the fresh cold eyes of disillusion. I would give that marriage another year at most, I thought. The Surtees looks wouldn't for ever make up for the void inside.

Golden Malt looked splendid on the turf, but he faced no easy task: the generous money prize alongside the prestige of taking home the King Alfred Gold Cup, even in replica, had drawn out the best. Of the nine provenly fast steeplechasers lining up, Golden Malt was generally counted only fourth or fifth in the hierarchy.

White knuckle time. Emily watched the start through race-glasses without trembling. Probably no one else in the box could have managed it. Emily stood rock still for nearly all of the two miles.

It was one of those races at Cheltenham when neither the fences nor the undulating curves sorted the runners out into a straggling line: all nine runners went round in a bunch, no one fell, the crowd on the grandstands yelled and drowned out the commentator, and Golden Malt came round the last bend in close fourth place and headed for glory up the hill.

Emily put down her race-glasses and breathlessly watched.

Himself was shouting with powerful lungs. My mother clasped her hands over her heart.

Patsy murmured, 'Oh, come on …'

Three horses crossed the line together.

One couldn't tell by eye which head had nodded forward. We all went down to the unsaddling area for first, second and third, and none of the little group could disguise the agony of the wait for the photograph.

When the result came it was in the impersonal voice of the course announcer.

'First, number five.'

Number five: Golden Malt.

There was a lot of kissing. Patsy gave me an uncomplicated smile, with no acid. Emily's eyes outshone the stars.

Patsy had ordained that the trophy should be presented to the winning owner by my mother, as Ivan's wife; so it happened that at the ceremony my mother presented the replica of the King Alfred Gold Cup to Emily, to universal cheers and a blaze of flashing cameras.

Ivan would have loved it.

When my mother and I were placidly breakfasting and reading congratulatory newspapers, my uncle Robert telephoned with a full-head of steam.

'Whatever you're doing, stop doing it. I've had Jed on the line. He is more or less foaming at the mouth. The conservationists have invaded the bothy with spades and pickaxes and metal detectors, and are tearing everything apart. He has told them they are trespassing, but it makes no difference, they won't go away, and Zoл Lang is there, with the light of battle in her eyes as if she were on a crusade.'

'Does Jed mean they are there now?'

'Indeed he does,' he said. 'They intend to stay all day and they are digging up all the ground round the bothy. He begs me to fly up there at once.'