To the Hilt (27 page)

The champagne was good. So were the canap6 snacks. Patsy had ordered the best.

There was a woman standing apart in a far comer of the room, talking to no one and looking a little lost, so I drifted that way to draw her in.

“You have no champagne,” I said.

“It’s all right.”

She was undemanding and not at home among Ivan’s friends. She wore a tweed skirt, a shiny pale blue blouse, a brown cardigan, flat shoes and pearls. Sixty, or thereabouts.

“Take my champagne,” I said, holding it out to her. “I haven’t drunk any. I’ll get some more.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t.” She took the glass, though, and sipped, eyeing me over the rim.

“I’m Lady Westering’s son,” I said.

“Yes, I know. I’ve seen you coming and going.” Then, seeing my surprise, added, “I live next door. I’m the caretaker there, you see. I’ve just popped in to pay my respects to Sir Ivan. Lady Westering invited me. Always so kind to me, both of them. Really nice people.”

“Yes.”

“I’m ever so sorry Sir Ivan died. Did he find what he was looking for?”

“Er ...” I said. “What was he looking for?”

“Ever so distressed he was, poor man.”

“Was he?” I asked, only half interested. “When was that?”

“Why, the night he died, of course.”

She sensed in me the sudden acute sharpening of attention and began to look nervous.

“It’s all right, Mrs.... er ... ” I assured her, calming us both. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I don’t know your name.”

“Hall. Connie Hall.”

“Mrs. Hall. Please do tell me about the night Sir Ivan died.”

“I was walking my little dog, you see, same as I always do before going to bed.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, nodding.

Reassured, she went on. “When I got back to the house-next door, that is, of course—there was Sir Ivan down in the road, and in his pajamas and robe, poor man, and
frantic,
there’s no other word for it.
Frantic.”

“Mrs. Hall,” I said intensely, “what was he frantic
about?”

She began to lose her nervousness and to enjoy telling me her tale.

“It was ever so unlike him, you see. I mean, I never thought of him in
pajamas
like everyone else, and I didn’t recognize him at first and told him pretty sharply to take himself off and leave the black plastic trash bags alone, because he was scrabbling about in them, and it wasn’t until he turned and spoke to me that I realized who he was, and he said, ‘Oh, Mrs. Hall, when do they collect the trash?’ I mean, it was after ten o‘clock at night! So I told him they collected the bags every Saturday morning, and Mondays and Thursdays, because we have a good service round here, this being a wealthy sort of place and not a once-a-week-if-you’re-lucky back street, and he was tearing open some of the bags with his
fzngernails ...
and looking inside them ... he was ever so ...
upset ...
and I asked him if I could help him, and ... and...”

Connie Hall stopped herself, distressed at the memory, and emptied her glass.

I pivoted 180 degrees, aware of Chris close behind me, and fielded his full glass of bubbles.

“Hey!” he objected.

“Get some more.”

I turned back to Connie Hall and exchanged Chris’s glass for the empty one she held.

“You’ll get me tiddly,” she said.

“What was Sir Ivan looking for in the black bags?” I asked. “Did he tell you?”

“I mean,” she said, “it didn’t make sense, him emptying some of the bags like that.”

I waited, smiling vaguely, while she sipped.

“He said he was looking for an empty box.” She frowned. “I asked him what empty box and he said Lois must have thrown it away. He was so fearfully upset...”

“What sort of box?”

“I think he said a tissue box. I think that’s what he said. But why should anyone worry so much about an empty tissue box?”

Dear God, I thought:
What had been written on it?

I said, “Have you told my mother about this?”

“No.” She shook her gray-haired head. “I didn’t want to upset her. Sir Ivan left all the rubbish just lying there and went in through his front door, which was open, of course, and said he would look in the kitchen, and I said goodnight to him and went in myself with my little dog, and it was a terrible shock the next day when I heard Sir Ivan had died.”

“It must have been ... I suppose Sir Ivan didn’t tell you
why
he was looking for the box?”

“No, but he was sort of talking to himself, I think it was something about Lois always moving things.”

“Nothing else?”

“No, poor man. He can’t have been himself, can he, poor Sir Ivan, to be scrabbling about in a trash heap in his nightclothes?”

“Well ... Thank you for telling me, Mrs. Hall. Would you like some smoked salmon?”

I collected a plate of goodies for her and found her another Park Crescent neighbor to talk to, but later on I saw her talking to Patsy, and from her gestures and her pleasure in the drama I suspected she was telling her the same story, and felt a deep thrust of unease, but wasn’t quite sure why.

Surtees stood beside Patsy, listening, and when he saw me looking at him he gave me a stare of such high-voltage malevolence that Chris said
“Jeez”
into my ear.

Maddened and murderous, I thought. It wasn’t the restrained and sensible who sought to kill. Surtees might, to my mind, be a fool, but I felt him also to be as unstable and volatile as gas.

Himself also fielded Surtees’s raw exhibition of an obsessional hatred fast ballooning past Patsy’s enduring antagonism, and, startled, asked, “Whatever did you do to deserve
that?”

“Shut him into a stall in Emily’s stable.”

“A bad move.”

“Mm.” I shrugged. “It can’t be helped.”

“Introduce me to your friend,” my uncle said, looking at Chris.

“Oh ... er ... Lord Kinloch,” I said to Chris, and to my uncle, “Christina.”

Himself said, “How do you do?”

Chris shook his hand, silently, though shooting a frilled cuff with panache. My uncle looked at me quizzically. I smiled back without explanation. Chris stuck to my back.

The room gradually cleared until only those close to Ivan and his affairs were left. There was to be no formal reading of his will, as its general provisions had been much discussed and were well known—the brewery to Patsy, everything else to my mother for her lifetime, reverting to Patsy on her death. For all her fears, Ivan had never swerved from his promises to his daughter, though all she displayed to me was triumph, not apology.

Oliver Grantchester, who, true to his loud-voiced authoritative manner, had taken it as his natural province to orchestrate the semi-business meeting, cleared his throat noisily and said, “I say, I say,” a few times until everyone was listening. “I suggest we all sit down,” he said, “and discuss the immediate future.”

Everyone acted on his suggestion, and I looked round at the haphazard circle of sofas, chairs and footstools, and at my mother, with me on one side of her and Emily on the other, then at Patsy and at Surtees (scowling) and Xenia (fidgeting), and at Margaret Morden and at Tobe, at Himself (alone, having sent his countess off with James and his wife), at Oliver (in charge), at Desmond Finch (smirking) and finally at Chris, beside me.

Chris crossed his long legs in their black hose, showing a stretch of thigh. The legs ended below the ankles in black patent medium-heeled court pumps. (“Don’t worry, I can run in them,” he’d said.)

Oliver stared at him with displeasure. “You may leave now,” he said.

I started to say, “I want him to stay- ” and almost choked on the ”him,” turning it to ”her” at the last fraction of credibility. ”I asked Christina to stay,” I repeated. ”She is my guest in my mother’s house.”

No one protested further. Tobe put his face in his hands. His body shook.

Oliver said with satisfaction, “We all know that the powers of attorney that Ivan gave to Alexander expired with his death. Alexander has no authority from now on to conduct any business for Ivan’s estate. Patsy, indeed, forbids it.”

Patsy nodded vigorously. Surtees sneered. Xenia, not old enough to understand the words, simply transmitted secondhand hate.

I said mildly, “There’s the codicil ...”

Oliver interrupted, “Ivan may have written a codicil, but it can’t be found. We can assume he tore it up, as he suggested he would.”

“He didn’t tear it up. He gave it to me for safekeeping.”

“Yes, we know that,” Oliver said impatiently, “and he made you give it back again. We were all there. He made you give it back.”

“It isn’t in this house,” Patsy said.

“Have you searched?” I asked with interest.

She glared.

“It isn’t in my office,” Grantchester said smoothly. “We can safely assume it no longer exists.”

“No, we can’t,” I said. “Ivan gave it back to me again later, and I have brought it here today.”

Both Patsy and Grantchester looked furiously disconcerted. My mother was nodding—“Ivan gave it back to Alexander”—and no one else seemed to mind one way or another.

“Give it to me, then, and I’ll read it out,” Grantchester said.

I hesitated. “I think,” I said politely, “that I’ll give it to Tobias to read out. If you don’t mind, Tobe?”

He had with difficulty stopped laughing. He said he would be of any service he could.

I put a hand out towards Chris, who opened his black leather purse and took out the codicil in its envelope. Also in the purse, I knew, were a scent-laden lace handkerchief, a lipstick and a thoroughly illegal set of brass knuckles. It wasn’t only Tobe who had trouble with giggles.

I took the envelope and crossed to Tobias, saying, “Ivan signed and dated this twice across the stick-down flap. You can verify that I haven’t tampered with it.”

Soberly Tobias examined the envelope, reported on its secure state and ripped it open, pulling out the single sheet of paper inside.

He read the introduction, then:

“I bequeath my racehorses to Emily Jane Kinloch, known as Emily Jane Cox.”

Emily gasped, wide-eyed, moved beyond tears.

Tobias continued, “I bequeath the chalice known as King Alfred’s Gold Cup to my friend Robert, earl of Kinloch.”

Himself looked stricken dumb.

Tobias read, “I appoint Alexander Kinloch, my stepson, to be my executor, in conjunction with my two executors already appointed in my will, namely Oliver Grantchester and Robert, earl of Kinloch.”

Patsy stood up, stiffly angry, and demanded, “What does that mean, appointing Alexander as executor?”

“It means,” Himself told her neutrally, “that Alexander has a duty to help bring your father’s estate to probate.”

“Are you telling me he still has any say in the brewery’s affairs?”

“Yes. Until your father’s estate is wound up, he does.”

“It’s impossible.” She turned to the lawyer. “Oliver! Say he’s wrong.”

Grantchester said regretfully, “If the codicil was properly drawn and witnessed, then Lord Kinloch is correct.”

Tobias stood and walked round the room, showing the paper to everyone in turn. “It is written in Sir Ivan’s own handwriting,” he said.

“But the witnesses?” Patsy demanded, before he reached her. “Who were
they?”

“The witnesses,” my mother said, “were Wilfred, his nurse, and Lois, our cleaner. I watched them witness Ivan’s signature. It was all done properly. Ivan was very careful.”

Patsy stared long at the paper. “He had no
right ... ”

“He had every right,” Himself said. “Alexander will work with Mr. Grantchester and me to do the best we can for a good resolution to your father’s affairs. Why do you not acknowledge that the continued existence of the brewery today is altogether thanks to Alexander’s efforts, in conjunction with Mr. Tollright and Mrs. Morden...” He gave them one of his little bows. “... and why do you not realize that your father knew what he was doing when he put his trust in Alexander’s integrity?”

“Don’t,” I said, trying to stop him.

“You never stand up for yourself, Al.”

“Let it be.”

He shook his head at me.

I reflected that Ivan’s trust had wandered in and out a bit, and also that he’d trusted Norman Quorn, but anything that might dampen Patsy’s animosity, I supposed, couldn’t be bad.

Oliver Grantchester moved smoothly back to his intended overview, this time accepting the codicil’s provisions as fact, whatever he privately thought of them.

“The horse Golden Malt ...” he began.

“Will run in the King Alfred Gold Cup a week on Saturday,” Emily said firmly.

Grantchester raised his eyebrows and said, “No one seems to know where the horse is.”

Surtees stood up convulsively and pointed at me in accusation. “He knows where it is.” He was unnecessarily shouting. “Make him tell you.”

Himself said, “After probate the horse will belong to Emily. Until then it can run in races by order of the executors.”

Surtees obstinately shouted, “It belongs to the brewery. Alexander stole it. I’ll see he goes to jail.”

Even the lawyer began to lose patience with him. He said, “Whether Mrs. Cox or the brewery is ultimately judged to be the owner, the executors can still authorize the horse to race, as it may lose value as an asset if it doesn’t, for which the executors might be held accountable. If Mrs. Cox can assure us that she can produce the horse at Cheltenham while complying with all racing regulations, then as executors, Lord Kinloch, Alexander and I will, at the appropriate time, declare him a runner.”

Well, bravo, I thought.

Surtees seethed.

Emily said sweetly that she was sure she could abide by all the regulations.

Surtees sat down like a cocked volcano, steaming, ever ready to erupt.