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'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.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

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.

I looked round the garden for possible exits and could see precious few. There was a lawn ringed with bushes, lit on the garden side, shadowy beyond. There was a flower bed with straggling chrysanthemums. There was an ornamental goldfish pond with an artificial stream running down into it over a pile of rocks.

There was a big house to the left, mostly dark, but with a brightly lit conservatory facing the garden.

There was Oliver Grantchester.

Oliver Grantchester.

The one crucial piece of information I hadn't learned was that he had a place in the country half a mile along the road from Patsy's house. The only address and telephone number for Oliver Grantchester in Ivan's address book had been in London.

Audrey Newton had firmly pointed to Oliver Grantchester's sketched head as the person who had collected her brother on the day he left Wantage to go on holiday.

I'd known who would be looking for me, but not where.

There weren't swear words bad enough to describe my stupidity.

Patsy would never change. Why had I ever thought that she would?

I'd wanted to believe that she had. I'd wanted an end to the long pointless feud.

Serve me right.

Grantchester stood six feet away from me and said, 'Where is the Kinloch hilt?'

I looked at him in bewilderment. I could think of no reason why he would want to know. He made some sort of signal to the wearer of the boxing gloves, who hit me low down, in the abdomen, which hurt.

My neck jerked forwards against the rope. Dire.

Grantchester said, 'Where is the King Alfred Gold Cup?'

Golf bag. Locker. Club house. Scotland. Out of his grasp.

A bash in the ribs. Reverberations. Altogether too much, and quite likely only the beginning. Shit.

'Ivan sent you the Cup. Where is it?'

Ask Himself.

Another fast, hard, pin-pointed bash. Shudder country.

Where the hell, I wondered, was my bodyguard?

Surtees strode to Grantchester's side.

'Where's the horse?' he yelled. 'Make him tell you where he's put the horse.'

The thug with the gloves was the one who had been demanding 'Where is it?' at the bothy.

'Where's the horse?' Grantchester said.

I didn't tell him. Painful decision.

Surtees positively jumped up and down.

'Make him tell you. Hit him harder.'

I thought detachedly that I would quite likely prefer to die than give in to Surtees.

Oliver Grantchester hadn't the same priorities as Patsy's husband.

He said to me, 'Where's your mother?'

In Devon, I thought: thank God.

Bash.

He had to be mad, if he thought I would tell him.