Come to Grief

by Dick Francis

  “Surrey, Sussex. Somewhere like that.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  Returning to Pont Square, I looked for Patricia Huxford in every phone book I possessed for Surrey and Sussex and, for good measure, the bordering southern counties of Hampshire and Kent. Of the few Huxfords listed, none turned out to be Patricia, a weaver.

  I really needed an assistant, I thought, saying good-bye to Mrs. Paul Huxford, wife of a double-glazing salesman. This sort of search could take hours. Damn Chico, and his dolly-bird protective missus.

  With no easy success from the directories I started on directory inquiries, the central computerized number-finder. As always, to get a number one had to give an address, but the computer system contemptuously spat out Patricia Huxford, Surrey, as being altogether too vague.

  I tried Patricia Huxford, Guildford (Guildford being Surrey’s county town), but learned only of the two listed P. Huxfords that I’d already tried. Kingston, Surrey: same lack of results. I systematically tried all the other main areas; Sutton, Epsom, Leatherhead, Dorking ... Surrey might be a small county in square-mile size, but large in population. I drew a uniform blank.

  Huxfords were fortunately rare. A good job she wasn’t called Smith.

  Sussex, then. There was East Sussex (county town Brighton) and West Sussex (Chichester). I flipped a mental coin and chose Chichester, and could hardly believe my lucky ears.

  An impersonal voice told me that the number of Patricia Huxford was ex-directory and could be accessed only by the police, in an emergency. It was not even in the C.O. grade-one class of ex-directory, where one could sweet-talk the operator into phoning the number on one’s behalf (C.O. stood for calls offered). Patricia Huxford valued absolute grade-two privacy and couldn’t be reached that way.

  In the highest, third-grade, category, there were the numbers that weren’t on any list at all, that the exchanges and operators might not know even existed; numbers for government affairs, the Royal Family and spies.

  I yawned, stretched and ate cornflakes for lunch.

  While I was still unenthusiastically thinking of driving to Chichester, roughly seventy more miles of arm-ache, Charles phoned from Aynsford.

  “So glad to catch you in,” he said. “I’ve been talking to Thomas Ullaston, I thought you’d like to know.”

  “Yes,” I agreed with interest. “What did he say?”

  “You know, of course, that he’s no longer Senior Steward of the Jockey Club? His term of office ended.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  I also regretted it. The new Senior Steward was apt to think me a light-weight nuisance. I supposed he had a point, but it never helped to be discounted by the top man if I asked for anything at all from the department heads in current power. No one was any longer thanking me for ridding them of their villain: according to them, the whole embarrassing incident was best forgotten, and with that I agreed, but I wouldn’t have minded residual warmth.

  “Thomas was dumbfounded by your question,” Charles said. “He protested that he’d meant you no harm.”

  “Ah!” I said.

  “Yes. He didn’t deny that he’d told someone about that morning, but he assured me that it had been only one person, and that person was someone of utterly good standing, a man of the utmost probity. I asked if it was Archibald Kirk, and he gasped, Sid. He said it was early in the summer when Archie Kirk sought him out to ask about you. Archie Kirk told him he’d heard you were a good investigator and he wanted to know how good. It seems Archie Kirk’s branch of the civil service occasionally likes to employ independent investigators quietly, but that it’s hard to find good ones they can trust. Thomas Ullaston told him to trust you. Archie Kirk apparently asked more and more questions, until Thomas found himself telling about that chain and those awful marks ... I mean, sorry, Sid.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “go on.”

  “Thomas told Archie Kirk that with your jockey constitution and physical resilience—he said physical resilience, Thomas did, so that’s exactly where Kirk got that phrase from—with your natural inborn physical resilience you’d shaken off the whole thing as if it had never happened.”

  “Yes,” I said, which wasn’t entirely true. One couldn’t ever forget. One could, however, ignore. And it was odd, I thought, that I never had nightmares about whippy chains.

  Charles chuckled. “Thomas said he wouldn’t want young master Halley on his tail if he’d been a crook.”

  Young master Halley found himself pleased.

  Charles asked, “Is there anything else I can do for you, Sid?”

  “You’ve been great.”

  “Be careful.”

  I smiled as I assured him I would. Be careful was hopeless advice to a jockey, and at heart I was as much out to win as ever.

  On my way to the car I bought some robust adhesive bandage and, with my right forearm firmly strapped and a sufficient application of ibuprofen, drove to Chichester in West Sussex, about seven miles inland from the English Channel.

  It was a fine spirits-lifting afternoon. My milk-coffee Mercedes swooped over the rolling South Downs and sped the last flat mile to the cathedral city of Chichester, wheels satisfyingly fast but still not as fulfilling as a horse.

  I sought out the public library and asked to see the electoral roll.

  There were masses of it: all the names and addresses of registered voters in the county, divided into electoral districts.

  Where was Chico, blast him?

  Resigned to a long search that could take two or three hours, I found Patricia Huxford within a short fifteen minutes. A record. I hated electoral rolls: the small print made me squint.

  Huxford, Patricia Helen, Bravo House, Lowell.

  Hallelujah.

  I followed my road map and asked for directions in the village of Lowell, and found Bravo House, a small converted church with a herd of cars and vans outside. It didn’t look like the reclusive lair of an ex-directory hermit

  As people seemed to be walking in and out of the high, heavy open west door, I walked in, too. I had arrived, it was soon clear, towards the end of a photographic session for a glossy magazine.

  I said to a young woman hugging a clipboard, “Patricia Huxford?”

  The young woman gave me a radiant smile. “Isn’t she wonderful?” she said.

  I followed the direction of her gaze. A small woman in an astonishing dress was descending from a sort of throne that had been built on a platform situated where the old transepts crossed the nave. There were bright theatrical spotlights that began to be switched off, and there were photographers unscrewing and dismantling and wrapping cables into hanks: There were effusive thanks in the air and satisfied excitement and the overall glow of a job done well.

  I waited, looking about me, discovering the changes from church to modem house. The window glass, high up, was clear, not colored. The stone-flagged nave had rugs, no pews, comfortable modern sofas pushed back against the wall to accommodate the crowd, and a large-screen television set.

  A white-painted partition behind the throne platform cut off the view of what had been the altar area, but nothing had been done to spoil the sweep of the vaulted ceiling, built with soaring stone arches to the glory of God.

  One would have to have a very secure personality, I thought, to choose to live in that place.

  The media flock drifted down the nave and left with undiminished goodwill. Patricia Huxford waved to them and closed her heavy door and, turning, was surprised to find me still inside.

  “So sorry,” she said, and began to open the door again.

  “I’m not with the photographers,” I said. “I came to ask you about something else.”

  “I’m tired,” she said. “I must ask you to go.”

  “You look beautiful,” I told her, “and it will only take a minute,” I brought my scrap of rag out and showed it to her. “If you are Patricia Huxford, did you weave this?”

  “Trish,” she said absently. “I’m called
Trish.”

  She looked at the strip of silk and then at my face.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “John.”

  “John what?”

  “John Sidney.”

  John Sidney were my real two first names, the ones my young mother had habitually used. “John Sidney, give us a kiss.” “John Sidney, wash your face.” “John Sidney, have you been fighting again?”

  I often used John Sidney in my job: whenever, in fact, I didn’t want to be known to be Sid Halley. After the past months of all-too-public drubbing I wasn’t sure that Sid Halley would get me anything anywhere but a swift heave-ho.

  Trish Huxford, somewhere, I would have guessed, in the middle to late forties, was pretty, blonde (natural?), small-framed and cheerful. Bright, observant eyes looked over my gray business suit, white shirt, unobtrusive tie, brown shoes, dark hair, dark eyes, unthreatening manner: my usual working confidence-inspiring exterior.

  She was still on a high from the photo session. She needed someone to help her unwind, and I looked—and was—safe. Thankfully I saw her relax.

  The amazing dress she had worn for the photographs was utterly simple in cut, hanging heavy and straight from her shoulders, floor length and sleeveless with a soft ruffled frill around her neck. It was the cloth of the dress that staggered: it was blue and red and silver and gold, and it shimmered.

  “Did you weave your dress?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “No, you wouldn‘t, not nowadays. Can I do anything for you? Where did you come from?”

  “London. Saul Marcus suggested you might know who wove my strip of silk.”

  “Saul! How is he?”

  “He has a white beard,” I said. “He seemed fine.”

  “I haven’t seen him for years. Will you make me some tea? I don’t want marks on this dress.”

  I smiled. “I’m quite good at tea.”

  She led the way past the throne and around the white-painted screen. There were choir stalls beyond, old and untouched, and an altar table covered by a cloth that brought me to a halt. It was of a brilliant royal blue with shining gold Greek motifs woven into its deep hem. On the table, in the place of a religious altar, stood an antique spinning wheel, good enough for Sleeping Beauty. Above the table, arched clear glass windows rose to the roof.

  “This way,” Patricia Huxford commanded, and, leading me past the choir stalls, turned abruptly through a narrow doorway which opened onto what had once probably been a vestry and was now a small modem kitchen with a bathroom beside it.

  “My bed is in the south transept,” she told me, “and my looms are in the north. You might expect us to be going to drink China tea with lemon out of a silver tea-pot, but in fact I don’t have enough time for that sort of thing, so the tea bags and mugs are on that shelf.”

  I half filled her electric kettle and plugged it in, and she spent the time walking around watching the miraculous colors move and mingle in her dress.

  Intrigued, waiting for the water to boil, I asked, “What is it made of?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Er, it looks like ... well ... gold.”

  She laughed. “Quite right. Gold, silver thread and silk.”

  I rather clumsily filled the mugs.

  “Milk?” she suggested.

  “No, thank you.”

  “That’s lucky. The crowd that’s just left finished it off.” She gave me a brilliant smile, picked up a mug by its handle and returned to the throne, where she sat neatly on the vast red velvet chair and rested a thin arm delicately along gilt carving. The dress fell into sculptured folds over her slender thighs.

  “The photographs,” she said, “are for a magazine about a festival of the arts that Chichester is staging all next summer.”

  I stood before her like some medieval page: stood chiefly because there was no chair nearby to sit on.

  “I suppose,” she said, “that you think me madly eccentric?”

  “Not madly.”

  She grinned happily. “Normally I wear jeans and an old smock.” She drank some tea. “Usually I work. To day is play-acting.”

  “And magnificent.”

  She nodded. “No one, these days, makes cloth of gold.”

  “The Field of the Cloth of Gold,” I exclaimed.

  “That’s right. What do you know of it?”

  “Only that phrase.”

  “The field was the meeting place at Guines, France, in June 1520, of Henry the Eighth of England and Francis the First of France. They were supposed to be making peace between England and France but they hated each other and tried to outdo each other in splendor. So all their courtiers wore cloth woven out of gold and they gave each other gifts you’d never see today. And I thought it would be historic to weave some cloth of gold for the festival ... so I did. And this dress weighs a ton, I may tell you. Today is the only time I’ve worn it and I can’t bear to take it off.”

  “It’s breathtaking,” I said.

  She poured out her knowledge. “In 1476 the Duke of Burgundy left behind a hundred and sixty gold cloths when he fled from battle against the Swiss. You make gold cloth—like I made this—by supporting the soft gold on threads of silk, and you can recover the gold by burning the cloth. So when I was making this dress, that’s what I did with the pieces I cut out to make the neck and armholes. I burnt them and collected the melted gold.”

  “Beautiful.”

  “You know something?” she said. “You’re the only person who’s seen this dress who hasn’t asked how much it cost.”

  “I did wonder.”

  “And I’m not telling. Give me your strip of silk.”

  I took her empty mug and tucked it under my left arm, and in my right hand held out the rag, which she took; and I found her looking with concentration at my left hand. She raised her eyes to meet my gaze.

  “Is it . . . ?” she said.

  “Worth its weight in gold,” I said flippantly. “Yes.”

  I carried the mugs back to the kitchen and returned to find her standing and smoothing her fingers over the piece of rag.

  “An interior decorator,” I said, “told me it was probably a modem copy of a hanging made in 1760 by ... um ... I think Philippe de Lasalle.”

  “How clever. Yes, it is. I made quite a lot of it at one time.” She paused, then said abruptly, “Come along,” and dived off again, leaving me to follow.

  We went this time through a door in another white-painted partition and found ourselves in the north transept, her workroom.

  There were three looms of varying construction, all bearing work in progress. There was also a business section with filing cabinets and a good deal of office paraphernalia, and another area devoted to measuring, cutting and packing.

  “I make fabrics you can’t buy anywhere else,” she said. “Most of it goes to the Middle East.” She walked towards the largest of the three looms, a monster that rose in steps to double our height.

  “This is a Jacquard loom,” she said. “I made your sample on this.”

  “I was told this piece was... a lampas? What’s a lampas?”

  She nodded. “A lampas is a compound weave with extra warps and wefts which put patterns and colors on the face of the fabric only, and are tucked into the back.” She showed me how the design of ropes and branches of leaves gleamed on one side of the turquoise silk but hardly showed on the reverse. “It takes ages to set up,” she said. “Nowadays almost no one outside the Middle East thinks the beauty is worth the expense, but once I used to sell quite a lot of it to castles and great houses in England, and all sorts of private people. I only make it to order.”

  I said neutrally, “Would you know who you made this piece for?”

  “My dear man. No, I can’t remember. But I probably still have the records. Why do you want to know? Is it important?”

  “I don’t know if it is important. I was given the
strip and asked to find its origin.”

  She shrugged. “Let’s find it then. You never know, I might get an order for some more.”

  She opened cupboard doors to reveal many ranks of box files, and ran her fingers along the labels on the spines until she came to one that her expression announced as possible. She lifted the box file from the shelf and opened it on a table.

  Inside were stiff pages with samples of fabric stapled to them, with full details of fibers, dates, amount made, names of purchasers and receipts.

  She turned the stiff pages slowly, holding my strip in one hand for comparison. She came to several versions of the same design, but all in the wrong color.

  “That’s it!” she exclaimed suddenly. “That’s the one. I see I wove it almost thirty years ago. How time flies. I was so young then. It was a hanging for a four-poster bed. I see I supplied it with gold tassels made of gimp.”

  I asked without much expectation, “Who to?”

  “It says here a Mrs. Gordon Quint.”

  I said, “... Er ...” meaninglessly, my breath literally taken away.

  Ginnie? Ginnie had owned the material? “I don’t remember her or anything about it,” Trish Huxford said. “But all the colors match. It must have been this one commission. I don’t think I made these colors for anyone else.” She looked at the black stains disfiguring the strip I’d brought. “What a pity! I think of my fabrics as going on forever. They could easily last two hundred years. I love the idea of leaving something beautiful in the world. I expect you think I’m a sentimental old bag.”

  “I think you’re splendid,” I said truthfully, and asked, “Why are you ex-directory, with a business to run?”

  She laughed. “I hate being interrupted when I’m setting up a design. It takes vast concentration. I have a mobile phone for friends—I can switch it off—and I have an agent in the Middle East, who gets orders for me. Why am I telling you all this?”

  “I’m interested.”

  She closed the file and put it back on the shelf, asking, “Does Mrs. Quint want some more fabric to replace this damaged bit, do you think?”

  Mrs. Quint was sixteen floors dead.

  “I don’t know,” I said.