To the hilt [en]

I sorted my way through the flood of words.

I said, 'You brought the envelope home with you-'

'That's right,' she interrupted. 'Norman told me to take his taxi, which he'd ordered, when it came, and he gave me the money for it to take me all the way home - such a treat, he was so generous - and I would never get him into trouble if he was alive.'

'We do know that, Mrs Newton,' I said. 'So you only opened the envelope one day last week…?'

'Yes, that's right.'

'And you phoned Sir Ivan…'

'But I didn't get him.'

'And you still have the list.'

'Yes.' She crossed to a sideboard and took an envelope out of a drawer. 'I do hope I'm doing right,' she said, handing the envelope to my mother. 'The brewery man telephoned only about an hour ago asking if Norman had left anything with me, and I said only a small list, nothing important, but he said he would send someone over for it early this afternoon.'

I looked at my watch. It was then twelve o'clock, noon.

I asked my mother, 'Did you tell anyone we were coming here?'

'Only Lois.' She was puzzled by the question. 'I said we were going to see a lady in Bloxham and wouldn't be needing lunch.'

I looked at her and at Audrey Newton. Neither woman had the slightest understanding of the possible consequences of what they had just said.

I turned to Mrs Newton. 'The brewery told me they didn't know your name. They said they didn't know Norman Quorn had a sister.'

She said, surprised, 'But of course I'm known there. Norman sometimes used to take me to the Directors' parties. Ever so proud, he was, of being made Director of Finance.'

'Who was it at the brewery who phoned you today?'

'Desmond Finch.' She made a face. 'I've never liked him much. But he definitely knows me, even if no one else does.'

I took the envelope from my mother and removed the paper from inside which was, as Audrey Newton had said, a short list. There were two sections, one of six lines, each line a series of numbers, and another section, also of six lines, each line either a personal or corporate name. I put the list back into the envelope and held it loosely.

A silence passed, which seemed long to me, in which I did some very rapid thinking.

I said to Audrey Newton, 'I think it would be a marvellous idea if you would go away for a lovely long weekend at the seaside.' And I said to my mother, 'And it would be a marvellous idea if you would go with Mrs Newton, and get away just for a few days from the sadness of Park Crescent.'

My mother looked astonished. 'I don't want to go,' she said.

'I so seldom ask anything,' I said. 'I wouldn't ask this if it were not important.' To Audrey Newton I said, 'I'll pay for you to go to a super hotel if you would go upstairs now and pack what you would need for a few days.'

'But it's so sudden,' she objected.

'Yes, but spur-of-the-moment treats are often the best, don't you think?'

She responded almost girlishly and, with an air of growing excitement, went upstairs out of earshot.

My mother said, 'What on earth is all this about?'

'Keeping you safe,' I said flatly. 'Just do it, Ma.'

'I haven't any clothes!'

'Buy some.'

'You're truly eccentric, Alexander.'

'Just as well,' I said.

I picked up my mobile phone and pressed the numbers of the pager Chris carried always and spoke the message, 'This is Al, phone me at once.'

We waited barely thirty seconds before my mobile buzzed, 'It's Chris.'

'Where are you?'

'Outside Surtees's house.'

'Is he home?'

'I saw him five minutes ago, wandering around, looking at his horses.'

'Good. Can Young and Uttley do a chauffeur-and-nice-car job?'

'No problem.'

'Chauffeur's hat. Comfortable car for three ladies.'

'When and where?'

'Like five minutes ago. Leave Surtees's, get the chauffeur to Emily Cox's yard in Lambourn. I'll meet you there.'

'Urgent?'

'Ultra urgent.'

'I'm on my way.'

My mother fluttered her hands. 'What is ultra urgent?'

'Have you by any chance got a safety pin?'

She looked at me wildly.

'Have you? You always used to have, in a baby sewing kit.' She dug into her handbag and produced the credit-card-sized travelling sewing kit that she carried for emergencies from life-long habit, and speechlessly she opened it and gave me the small safety phi it contained.

I was as usual wearing a shirt under a sweater. I put the Quorn envelope in my shirt pocket, pinned it to the shirt to prevent its falling out, and pulled my sweater down over it.

'And paper,' I said. 'Have you anything I could draw on?'

She had a letter from a friend in her handbag. I took the envelope, opened it out flat, and on its clean inside, with my mother's ball point pen, had time to make nine small outline drawings of familiar people - Desmond Finch, Patsy, Surtees, Tobias included - before Audrey Newton came happily downstairs in holiday mood carrying a suitcase.

I showed her the page of small heads. 'The person who came to pick up your brother on the first day of his holiday… was it one of these?'

She looked carefully and, as if the request were nothing out of the ordinary, pointed firmly. 'That one,' she said.

'You're sure?'

'Positive.'

'Let's get going,' I said.

Audrey Newton having locked her house, we drove away and headed for Lambourn.

'Why Lambourn?' my mother asked.

'I want to talk to Emily.'

'What's wrong with a telephone?'

'Insects,' I said. 'Bugs.'

Friday lunchtime. If Emily had gone to the races it would have complicated things a little, but she was at home, in her office, busy at paperwork with her secretary.

Nothing I did surprised her any more, she said. She agreed easily to my making lunch and pouring wine for her unexpected guests but adamantly refused to join them in any flight from Egypt. She was not, she pointed out, Moses.

I persuaded her to go as far as her drawing-room and there explained the explosive dangers of the present situation.

'You're exaggerating,' she objected.

'Well, I hope so.'

'And anyway, I'm not afraid.'

'But I am,' I said.

She stared.

'Em,' I said, 'if someone were standing behind you now with a knife, threatening to cut your throat if I didn't shoot myself, and I believed it, then…' I hesitated.

'Then what?'

'Then,' I said matter-of-factly, 'I would shoot myself.'

After a long pause, she said, 'It won't come to that.'

'Please, Em.'

'What about my horses?'

'Your head lad must have a home number. You can phone him.'

'Where from?'

'I don't know yet,' I said. 'But wherever you are, use your portable phone.'

'It's all mad.'

'I wish I were in Scotland,' I said. 'I wish I were painting. But I'm here. I'm walking over an abyss that no one else seems to see. I want you safe.'

'Al…' She breathed out on a long, capitulating sigh. 'Why you?'

Why me?

The cry of ages.

Unanswerable.

Why did I care about right and wrong?

What made a policeman a policeman?

Emily went quickly out of the room and left me looking at the painting I had given her, that was not about an amateur game of golf in bad weather, but about the persistence of the human spirit.