In the age of cars, the Ridgeway path beckoned walkers, and to lone horse-thieves it was a broad highway.
When I reached it I almost missed it: trotted straight across and only belatedly realised that I'd been expecting more of a production than a simple rutted track. Indeed, I retraced my steps and stopped Golden Malt for a rest while I looked around for helpful signposts, and found none. I was on high ground. The track ran from east to west, according to the wind. It was definitely a path. It had to be the right one.
Shrugging, I committed the enterprise and turned left, to the west, and trotted hopefully on. All paths, after all, led somewhere, even if not to Stonehenge.
I had chosen a longer route than essential in order to avoid roads, and it was true that the Ridgeway didn't represent the straightest line from A to B, but as I didn't want to get lost and have to ask the way and draw attention to myself, I considered the extra time and miles well spent.
The path turned south-west at roughly where I expected and led across a minor road or two and, to my relief, proving to be the real thing, delivered me to Foxhill.
Emily's friend took my quiet arrival for granted.
'Mrs Cox,' I said, 'says she will call by in a day or two to pick up the saddle and bridle.'
Tine.'
'I'll be off, then.'
'Right. Thanks. We'll look after the old boy.' She patted the chestnut neck with maternal and expert fondness, and nodded to me cheerfully as I left, not querying my assertion of thumbing a lift back to Lambourn.
I thumbed a lift to Swindon instead, however, and caught a train to Reading, and called on a powerful area bank manager who wasn't expecting a padded jacket, jodhpur boots and a shiny blue riding helmet with jockeys' goggles.
'Er…' he said.
'Yes. Well, I'm sorry about the presentation but I'm acting for my stepfather, Sir Ivan Westering, and this is not my normal world.'
'I know Sir Ivan well,' he said. 'I'm sorry he's ill.'
I handed him a certified copy of the power of attorney and Ivan's Alternate Director letter which, although much creased by now through having been folded into my shirt pocket for the cross-country expedition, worked its customary suspension of prompt ejection, and, smooth man that he was, he listened courteously to my plea for the workers at the brewery to receive their wages as usual for this present week, and for the pensioners to be paid also, while the insolvency practitioner, Mrs Morden, tried to put together a committee of creditors for a voluntary arrangement.
He nodded. 'I've already been approached by Mrs Morden.' He paused thoughtfully, then said, 'I've also talked to Tobias Tollright. He told me you would come here on your knees.'
'I'll kneel if you like.'
The faintest of smiles twitched in his eye muscles, and vanished. He said, 'What do you get out of this personally?'
Surprised, I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything, a feeble absence of answer that seemed not to bother him.
'Hmph.' He sniffed. He looked at his fingers. He said, 'All right. The wages cheques will be honoured for this week. We'll allow the pensioners seventy-five per cent. Then we'll see.' He stood up, holding out a smooth white hand. 'A revelation doing business with you, Mr Kinloch.'
I shook his hand and breathed deeply with relief on the way out.
With an hour and a half to spare before the intimidating prospect of my appointment with Mrs Margaret Morden, fairy godmother to near-bankrupt Cinderellas, I bought more throwaway razors, a small tube of shaving cream and another comb - the Euston collection being still in London - and in a pub tried to put a tidier face on things. Nothing but time, though, would unblack the eye. I drank half a pint of King Alfred Gold to get reacquainted with what I was trying to save and turned up promptly on the lady's threshold.
A word or two had gone ahead of me, I gathered, as she knew at once who I was and welcomed me without blinking. The power of attorney was yet again carefully inspected, a certified copy accepted and ready to be filed away, and a copy of Ivan's letter taken, as had been done also at Tollright's firm, and the bank. Mrs Morden gave me back Ivan's open-sesames and requested me, in my turn, to sign an authorisation for her to act for the brewery. This was not handshake-gentleman's-agreement-land, this was paper-trail responsibility.
Mrs Margaret Morden looked somewhere in the ageless forties, and was not the severe businesswoman I'd expected. True, her manner was based on self-confidence, and formidable intelligence shone in steady grey eyes, but she was dressed not in a suit but in a soft calf-length dress of pink and violet printed silk, with a ruffle round the neck.
Involuntarily I smiled, and from her satisfied change of expression realised that that was exactly the aim of her clothes; to encourage, to soften prejudice, to mediate, to persuade.
Her office was spacious, a cross between functional grey and leather-bound law books, with a desk-like shelf the whole length of one wall, bearing six or seven computer monitors, all showing different information. A chair on castors stood ready before them waiting, it seemed, to roll her from screen to screen.
She sat down in a large black chair behind a separate executive-sized desk and waved me to the clients' (slightly smaller) chair facing. There were brewery papers already spread out on the desk: she and Tobias between them had obviously wasted no tune.
She said, 'We have here a serious situation…'
The serious situation was abruptly made worse by the door crashing open to admit a purposeful missile of a man, with a flustered secretary behind him bleating (as in a thousand film scripts), 'I'm very sorry, Mrs Morden, I couldn't stop him.'
The intruder, striding into centre-stage, pointed a sharp finger at my face and said, 'You've no right to be here. Out.' He jerked the finger towards the door. 'Any negotiations needed by the King Alfred Brewery will be performed by me.'
He was quivering with rage, a thin fiftyish man going extensively bald and staring fiercely through large glasses with silvery metal rims. He had a scrawny neck, a sharp Adam's apple and megawatt mental energy. He told me again to leave.
Mrs Morden asked calmly, 'And you are…?'
'Madam,' he said furiously, 'in the absence of Sir Ivan Westering I am in charge of the brewery. I am the acting managing director. This wretched young man hasn't the slightest authority to go round interviewing our auditor and our bank manager, as I hear he's been doing. You will disregard him and get rid of him, and I will decide whether or not we need your services at all, which I doubt.'
Mrs Morden asked non-committally, 'Your name?'
He gasped as if amazed that she shouldn't know it. 'Finch,' he said sharply, 'Desmond Finch.'
'Ah, yes.' Mrs Morden looked down at the papers. 'It mentions you here. But I'm sorry, Mr Finch, Mr Kinloch has an undoubted right to act in Sir Ivan's stead.'
She waved a hand towards the certified copy of the power of attorney, which lay on her desk. Finch snatched it up, glanced at it, and tore the page across. 'Sir Ivan's too ill to know what he's doing,' he pronounced. 'This farce has got to stop. I am in charge of the brewery's affairs and I alone.'
Mrs Morden put her head on one side and invited my comment. 'Mr Kinloch?'
Ivan, I reflected, had deliberately by-passed Desmond Finch in giving me his trust, and I wondered why. It would have been normal for him to have passed his power to his second-in-command. If he hadn't done so - if he had very pointedly not done so - then my obligation to my stepfather was absolute.